East Hampton - LongHouse Reserve will kick off its 20th Anniversary Season on Saturday, April 30, 2011, at the Rites of Spring by offering visitors an opportunity to experience a number of dramatic art forms and new features throughout its beautiful gardens. The permanent collection at LongHouse includes works by iconic artists such as LeWitt, Ono, de Kooning, Benglis, Voulkos, and Fuller.

This year, LongHouse installations also include sculptures by Donald Baechler, George Rickey, and Tamiko Kawata. Additionally, a memorial exhibition honoring the life's work of acclaimed American potter, Toshiko Takaezu, will be on display through July 9. Showcasing unique and stunning ceramics produced over her 60-year career and the publication of "The Art of Toshiko Takaezu: In the Language of Silence," a scholarly book of her accomplishments, works on display will include both stoneware and bronze.

Takaezu aficionados amass dozens of her pieces and LongHouse Reserve is fortunate to exhibit a number of prized works owned by Louis and Sandra Grotta, Barry and Irene Fisher, Jane and Leonard Korman, John Mosler and Lenore Tawney Foundation. These will be displayed in the spacious, day-lighted Pavilion. In addition, LongHouse will exhibit in the gardens a dozen of Takaezu's major works - some of heroic proportion - in stoneware and bronze.

To further entice visitors, a signboard exhibition, "Every Tree Tells a Story," will run from April 30 to June 15 2011. This acclaimed presentation focuses on the irreplaceable trees and tree groupings often associated with historically important people and events that have shaped the development of communities and cultures.

"Every Tree Tells a Story" is a traveling exhibition of commissioned photography by The Cultural Landscape Foundation. It features 26 images of sentinel and specimen trees, allées and boulevards, and urban forests of 12 different locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico including East Hampton. East Hampton was once the home of hundreds of the beautiful the American Elm Trees (Ulmus Americana) dating as far back as the American Revolution and one of the Hampton's historical landmarks. The elms over Main Street were made famous by a Childe Hassam's painting of the East Hampton village in the 1920s. Although threatened by insects and diseases, many specimens continue to grow in East Hampton; a living reminder of the nation's past.

Additionally, the Anniversary season will feature exciting lectures and tours. On May 20, LongHouse Reserve patrons will tour three private collections of art in craft media and an architecturally acclaimed Richard Meier house. On June 13, Longhouse will host its fourth Student Annual. On June 25, LongHouse Reserve will once again host Planters On & Off the Ground; judged this year by Dominique Browning, former Editor in Chief of House & Garden magazine. And, of course, the much anticipated Summer Benefit, honoring glass-artisan, Dale Chihuly, and philanthropist, Barbara Slifka, will take place on July 16.

Open days for members and the public are 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., Wednesdays and Saturdays, from April 30 through October 8 (Columbus Day weekend); July and August only Wednesday through Saturday.