$7M gift to Stony Brook University will preserve East End art legacy

Helen Harrison, who spent 34 years as director of Stony Brook University’s Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, and her husband, artist Roy Nicholson, are leaving a planned gift worth an estimated $7 million to support East End arts.

The gift includes an estimated $5 million estate donation — the Roy Nicholson Art Collection and the couple’s Sag Harbor home and studio, the Harrison-Nicholson House — plus a $2 million endowed fund.

The home will eventually house a working artist or scholar through a future artist-in-residence program, with funds set aside to maintain both the collection and property in perpetuity. The endowment will be boosted by New York state’s endowment match program and the Simons Infinity Investment Match Challenge.

The gift, the university said, secures a rare artistic pipeline linking the East End’s landscape, its most storied art history and the students and scholars Stony Brook trains next.

“Helen Harrison and Roy Nicholson have contributed so richly to the fabric of the East End,” Stony Brook University President Andrea Goldsmith said. “Their gift will ensure that the arts will continue to transform our students and our entire region.”

In 1990, Harrison took over the Pollock-Krasner House, the former home of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, when it had no endowment or landmark status. It’s now a National Historic Landmark owned by the Stony Brook Foundation.

She also opened the Study Center at Stony Brook Southampton Library in 2009. An endowed fellowship in her name already supports abstract expressionism research, a Stony Brook spokesperson said.

Nicholson taught fine arts at Southampton College of Long Island University starting in 1986 and built a five-decade career known for nature-inspired work.

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