(Photo: Courtesy of the Children's Museum of the East End)

Heading out to the Hamptons with the kids this season just got a bit easier. The Children’s Museum of the East End, which opened last fall, will unveil its newest exhibit this week with the child-friendly works of Carmen Lomas Garza, a Mexican-American painter and author. The artist’s life-size works are scenes of her south Texas family traditions—cooking tamales, dancing to conjunto accordion music, attacking piñatas. A recording of Lomas Garza allows her to be her own docent, talking to visitors about her neighborhood and her teenage dreams of becoming an artist. Hers is the first summer exhibit at the museum, created by Bea Alda—Alan and Arlene’s daughter—and a group of her friends after she discovered that the 12,000 kids who live year-round on the East End had few cultural opportunities. (The elder Aldas bought and donated the land on which the museum was built.) The children of the mothers who gave birth to the museum have, unfortunately, already aged out of its target audience. But with local celebs like Mercedes Ruehl and Emma Walton doing storytelling, no one is worried about a lack of audience.

Exhibit opens 5/27 and runs through 9/4; Mon., Wed., Thurs., Sat. 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Fri. 9 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Children’s Museum of the East End, 376 Bridgehampton/Sag Harbor Turnpike, Bridgehampton, Long Island (631-537-8250 or cmee.org); $7 grown-ups, $5 seniors and kids. Free on-site parking.

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• Articles by Susan Avery
• Table of Contents: May 29, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!