The Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington recently announced the top awards for Long Island’s Best: Young Artists at The Heckscher Museum. The prestigious competition received 385 entries from a record-breaking 62 high schools across Suffolk and Nassau counties. The juried selection narrowed the field down to 80 works currently featured in the museum gallery through April 15.

“Every year, the caliber of artwork is more impressive and the artists’ statements increasingly more creative and thoughtful. It is a challenge to choose the best of the best from hundreds of entries,” noted Joy Weiner, director of education.  

The competition’s four top honorees were Paulina Trzonkowska, a senior at West Babylon High School who received the Celebrate Achievement Best in Show Award for her colored pencil work titled “Too Close”; Isabelle Lin, a junior at Manhasset High School,  who received Second Place, the Judith Sposato Memorial Prize, for her painting, “Two Flags”; Estefanie Arrue, a senior at Hicksville High School, received Third Place, the Hadley Prize, for “Female Reconstruction,” a mixed media work; and Rico Ford, a senior at Valley Stream Central High School, received Fourth Place for the colored pencil work “Pair of Kings.”   

 Now in its 22nd year, Long Island’s Best provides students the opportunity to exhibit their artwork in a prominent museum and to be featured in a full-color catalog while museum visitors are treated to exceptional artwork by talented emerging artists.  

Jurors for the exhibition were Lisa Chalif, curator, The Heckscher Museum of Art, and guest juror Doug Reina, a notable Setauket artist and 2014 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient. 

“For high school students, this is a rare and exciting opportunity to put their skills to the ultimate test and show the world who they are. This is where you bring your A game,” said Reina. “This is their first taste of what life in the contemporary art world is really like. The ‘creative pressure’ gives these young people terrific experience as they become the next generation of the world’s artists.”

In addition to the gallery exhibition, visitors can see all of the artwork submitted to the competition on a digital display that will run for the entirety of the exhibition and Mitchells, a Huntington-based department store, will display select images from Long Island’s Best in its windows on Main Street beginning mid-April.  

Generous support for exhibit is provided by The Darrell Fund Endowment, Strong-Cuevas Foundation, TD Charitable Foundation, The Claire Friedlander Family Foundation,  RBC Wealth Management,  A Friend of the Museum and Dr. Inna Gellerman of Gellerman Orthodontics.

The Heckscher Museum of Art, 2 Prime Ave., Huntington is open Wednesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 631-351-3250 or visit www.heckscher.org.