ROSLYN HARBOR, NY.- In a sweeping showcase of modern art, Nassau County Museum of Art opened two exhibitions, Selections from the Saltzman Family Collection and Long Island Collects Modern Art on Saturday, July 25. The exhibitions remain on view through November 8, 2015. The previous advance announcement of the showing of the Saltzman Family Collection is replaced by these two exhibitions that together fall under the title THE MODERNS: Chagall, Degas, Léger, Miró, Picasso and more….

THE MODERNS: Selections from the Saltzman Family Collection continues celebrations of the Museum’s 25th anniversary year with an exhibition of early 20th-century modern art. The exhibition honors the Museum’s Founding President, the late Ambassador Arnold A. Saltzman, who during his life formed one of America’s great private collections of early modernist painting and sculpture. The exhibition includes works by well-known modernists such as Marc Chagall, Joan Miró, Constantin Brancusi, Edgar Degas, Robert Delaunay, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger and many others.

THE MODERNS: Long Island Collects Modern Art, organized by guest curator Franklin Hill Perrell, draws together choice examples of 20th-century art from significant Long Island collections. This special presentation embraces a wide range of treasures by pioneering artists of the modernist era, among them Matisse, Monet, Renoir, Dali, Léger, Chagall, Miró, Toulouse-Lautrec and others.

The Museum is offering several public programs that will serve to enhance and illuminate the works on view. The Brown Bag Lecture series of exhibition talks will be presented on August 27, September 24 and October 29. Jake Gorst, author of a book on his grandfather, modernist architect Andrew Geller, presents a talk on his famous relative on September 26. Art historian Miriam Brumer discusses works in the Saltzman family collection on October 17. On November 7, Shirley Romaine discusses Serge Sabarsky, who mounted exhibitions of German and Austrian Expressionist works beginning in 1989 when he was the first director of the newly privatized Nassau County Museum of Art. A 30-minute documentary, Edgar Degas of Dandies, Ballerinas and Women Ironing, screens daily.