Thursday, October 1, 2026
As the United States marks its 250th anniversary, Oyster Bay artist Barbara Prey will see three of her watercolor works featured in a major exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Prey, an internationally recognized watercolorist and a longtime Oyster Bay resident, was invited to participate in an exhibition presented by the U.S. Department of State’s Art in Embassies, part of the Freedom 250 celebrations planned by President Trump. The exhibition, at the Art Museum of the Americas, is scheduled to open July 30 and run through October.
“I was very honored to be invited to be part of the exhibit,” Prey said.
The exhibition will feature three of Prey’s paintings, including “Gallantly Streaming,” a work with deep ties to Oyster Bay and the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. The painting, depicting an American flag against a clear blue sky, was created as part of Prey’s 9/11 series.
“Flags were everywhere after 9/11,” she said. “It was a time of collective mourning for us.”
The work carries particular significance for Oyster Bay. Prey noted that the flag-raising it depicts was officiated by her husband, the Rev. Jeff Prey, of the First Presbyterian Church of Oyster Bay, at Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club following a 30-day mourning period after the attacks.
“It’s a very special painting, and I love that it’s been exhibited — exhibited in governors’ offices, but they didn’t know it’s from 9/11,” she said. “This wonderful story of this painting, that really was in memory and solidarity of all the mourning of what happened after 9/11.”
The work was previously displayed at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Spain and at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York. Prey recently borrowed it back from the U.N. mission in order to include it in the anniversary exhibition.
A second painting selected for the exhibition, “God and Country,” also emerged from the artist’s response to Sept. 11. The watercolor depicts a small church on Maine’s Swans Island adorned with patriotic ribbons and an American flag.
Prey, who grew up in Manhattan, said the attacks touched her personally. “I knew my children’s friend’s father was killed,” she said. “I knew families who lost two sons. So it wasn’t just 9/11; it was personal. We all knew people who were killed in the attacks.”
“God and Country” hung for a time in the residence of the U.S. ambassador to France in Paris.
The third work selected for the exhibition, “250th,” is a more recent painting inspired by Monhegan Island, in Maine, and incorporates patriotic imagery with the placement of an American flag in a wreath.
While the exhibition celebrates the semiquincentennial, the two paintings connected to Sept. 11 were selected by curators for the Art in Embassies program rather than by Prey herself.
She has worked with AIE program for nearly two decades, with her artwork appearing in embassies and diplomatic residences around the world, including in Oslo as well as Paris and Madrid. “It’s a wonderful kind of cross-cultural diplomacy,” she said.
Known primarily for her watercolors, Prey has built an international reputation in a medium she describes as uniquely demanding. Unlike oil painting, where artists can paint over mistakes, watercolor offers little room for error.
“You can’t make mistakes with anything,” she said. “With oil painting, you can overpaint it, but in watercolor, once it’s down, you really can’t erase it.”
Her mastery of the medium has earned her a place in some of the nation’s most prestigious collections, including at the White House, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
Prey also served for 14 years as a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts, advising the National Endowment for the Arts during four administrations. Her artistic career has also included work for the NASA’s former art program, which commissioned her four times to document moments in American space history.
Residents interested in viewing one of the featured works closer to home can currently see a print of “Gallantly Streaming” on display at Raynham Hall Museum, in Oyster Bay.
