THE ART OF IT

Shelved Departures

Anastasia Stanmeyer | Spring 2026 Issue

Barbara Ernst Prey is considered one of America’s foremost painters. In the Berkshires, she may be most well-known for her 2017 site-specific commission for MASS MoCA, Building 6, which remains the largest known watercolor painting created for public display. A six-minute documentary on creating that painting has just been released. Prey also has paintings at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, NASA Headquarters, Kennedy Space Center, embassies abroad, and elsewhere. She has a home and studio in Williamstown and in Maine, with her main residence/studio in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Prey has spent her career painting America, American stories, and the world around her—including this watercolor, Shelved Departures. On one of her drives to Williamstown, she stopped with her family at the Ausable Club located at the Adirondack Mountain Reserve in St. Huberts, New York. Her son took her inside a boathouse to show her rows of Adirondack guideboats, fishing boats, and canoes. “It was one of those moments,” she recalls. “I look around a lot for painting ideas, and that was just perfect. It’s the story of the end of the season.” She started painting right there and finished the piece in her studio in Williamstown. The piece will be on exhibit in July as part of Prey’s 250th exhibition at her gallery in Port Clyde, Maine. The exhibitions also will be viewable online, as well as the new documentary Building 6