Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages, Stony Brook

What a fabulous Long Island experience! The museum presents a fine combination of history and art. We spent hours there and will go back again. The Mount brothers from Long Island are world class artists, and there is no other Mount collection as comprehensive as this. The labels wonderfully explain the historical context of the works. And don't miss the painting, "The Wreck of the Mexico," (1837) by James Fulton Pringle. It depicts a true-life scene that Walt Whitman wrote about in the poem "Sleepers" in "Leaves of Grass." The painting shows one hundred or so immigrants, many of them families from Ireland, standing on the icy deck of a wrecked ship just 100 yards off Long Beach. The captain and crew are seen rowing to shore in the only rescue boat. Within a few hours, all of the passengers will freeze to death. It is a tragic, heart-wrenching scene. There is a book about it for sale at the museum store: "WATER & ICE: The Tragic Wrecks of the Bristol and the Mexico on the South Shore of Long Island."

Super cool...took the kids. They loved to see so many different wagons and the evolution. Also, the art museum with all the school kids art...made the kids feel special to see their art on display.