Ghoulish and Familiar Art at the Southampton Center Top Right, Charles Addams With Permission of Tee and Charles Addams Foundation; Photographs by Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times At the Charles Addams exhibition at the Southampton Center, clockwise from top left: a painted plastered gauze head of Gomez Addams from "The Addams Family"; one of many cartoons; a skeleton that belonged to the artist; H. Kevin Miserocchi, the executive director of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation; and the center's exterior. Gomez, Pugsley, Wednesday and three other members of the Addams Family, represented by heads once worn by circus clowns, greet visitors to the Southampton Center, a new cultural space in the former home of the Parrish Art Museum. Looming in the distance, past freshly painted white walls hung with 66 original drawings by Charles Addams, is a huge banner with a likeness of the mischievous Uncle Fester, a prime member of the whimsically ghoulish family made famous in cartoons in The New Yorker, a recent Broadway musical and television series, movies and books. "Chas Addams: Family and Friends," on display in the center's three front galleries through Nov. 3, is meant to provide "a sampling" of Addams's works, which depict many characters beyond his familiar family, said H. Kevin Miserocchi, executive director of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation. A real skeleton that belonged to Addams is also on display, as is one of his drawing tables. The foundation is based in Sagaponack in the house where the cartoonist, who signed his drawings Chas Addams, lived from 1985 until his death in 1988 at age 76. Addams, who also had a Manhattan home, spent time on the East End beginning in the 1940s, Mr. Miserocchi said, and married his third wife, Marilyn, known as Tee, in 1980 in a pet cemetery in Water Mill. She died in 2002. "Charlie was an artist of the people, so it seemed simpatico for us to start this relationship with the Southampton Center, which is literally opening up its doors for the people," Mr. Miserocchi said. Among the plans for the center, which began offering mostly free activities and exhibitions in July, is a renovation that will make two side entrances as inviting as the main one on Jobs Lane, J. Whitney Stevens, co-chairwoman of the board of directors, said. The building, an Italian Renaissance Revival structure built in stages starting in 1897, was bequeathed in 1932 to the Village of Southampton by Samuel Longstreth Parrish, a New York lawyer and art collector. It was occupied by the Parrish Art Museum until last year, when the museum moved to Water Mill. The board of the center, which is now largely staffed by volunteers, wants to restore the building and grounds, add an outdoor pavilion and expand its programming, Ms. Stevens said. Siamak B. Samii, a member of the center's board and chairman of the village's planning commission, said he met Mr. Miserocchi about two years ago at an art opening. Bringing in an Addams exhibition, especially around Halloween, was "basically a no-brainer," he said. Future shows, perhaps with a different theme each year, could become annual events, he and Mr. Miserocchi said. Other Halloween activities at the center this year include a party with D.J."s and dancing on Oct. 26 and a haunted house on Oct. 27 and 31. The cartoons that Mr. Miserocchi selected from among the 3,000 to 4,000 preliminary drawings and published works the foundation owns include iconic images and others that are less well known. In a 1940 classic, a skier has left tracks that widen, one on each side of a tall tree, then come together again as she continues on her way. This is among the cartoons Mr. Miserocchi categorizes as "anomalies." Likewise, a watercolor that became a New Yorker cover shows a deep-sea diver who notices a light on inside a sunken ship. In one of several macabre cartoons about relationships, a couple enters a taxidermist's shop, but only the wife exits, smiling. In a 1977 cartoon, a wife tells a telephone caller, "He's in the garden." The garden includes a freshly dug oblong mound. Another cartoon shows a woman at a department store information desk. The caption reveals which section she seeks: "Blunt instruments?" On a more lighthearted note, a watercolor used as a New Yorker cover in 1987 shows witches socializing at a cocktail party in front of what seems to be their own apartment building. A video of a 1981 interview with Addams plays continuously, and two settings, one featuring the skeleton that Addams owned wearing one of Addams's robes, evoke the artist's sensibility. A sleek portrait of Morticia, the black-clad wife of the Addams Family, was painted by Addams on a window shade that he bought to keep out the morning sun during a 1971 visit to Florida, Mr. Miserocchi said. Morticia's head is missing from the circus ensemble, which was used by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus during a "grand parade" that began each performance in 1965. That was a year after the start of the television sitcom that brought the Addams Family to wider recognition. Mr. Miserocchi only recently bought the Gomez head from its owner on eBay. The large banner featuring Uncle Fester's face was made for a 1994 retrospective at the New York Public Library titled "The Compleat Charles Addams." Some items in the current exhibition recently returned from a museum show in Sydney, Australia, that coincided with a run of the "Addams Family" musical that opened on Broadway in 2010 and is still touring, Mr. Miserocchi said. Not everything Addams drew was ghoulish, Mr. Miserocchi said as he contemplated a 1956 picture of two unicorns looking wistfully at Noah's Ark as it floats away. "I think it's kind of sweet," he said. "Chas Addams: Family and Friends" is at the Southampton Center, 25 Jobs Lane, Southampton, Fridays through Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. through Nov. 3. Information: (631) 283-0967 or southamptoncenter.org.