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The Montauk Artists’ Association will return this Friday, August 17, through Sunday, August 19, with its 24th annual Show on the Green, a fine art show featuring artists from all over Long Island.
Anne Weissman, the director of the association, has been running the shows since the beginning, plus the association’s Memorial Day weekend shows that began 10 years ago.
Ms. Weissman said the two shows are completely different—both have their target audiences. The Memorial Day weekend show is geared more toward a younger crowd, as many summer residents aren’t yet out and the only thing “you can do is either go to the movies or come to the art show.”
In August, she said, the older crowd tends to go for the more traditional, less bedazzled art, and the artists know and cater to that. Everything that the artists bring to their tents must be made by the artists themselves, as nothing can be “buy-sell,” or bought from somewhere else and then sold again at the show.
Many artists return each year, and she knows about 80 percent of those returning artists. “They come and go,” she said. “They’ll go somewhere else for two or three years to try a different market and then they come back and everyone is so happy to see them that they’ll buy.”
Each artist pays an application fee to enter the show, and that money goes toward funding the Montauk Artists’ Association and advertising for the shows.
The association raises money not only to fund its own gallery, the Depot Gallery in Montauk, but also to give a scholarship to a graduating Montauk student each year, in addition to running an art school.
The show will be a bit smaller this year as the Town of East Hampton put new rules in place for the tents. “East Hampton has always tried to put down the show. This year, just for fun, they took down 15 spots just because they could, and the police wanted the tents to be farther away from the edge of the green,” she said. However, this won’t stop the artists from bringing as much work as they can to show and sell.
The show is technically a juried show, but she considers it a “laid back jury.”
Emphasizing that there is no accounting for taste, she said the jurors—association members who are likely friends with the artists in the show—don’t declare first, second and third place. “Plus, you’re putting one, two, and three on friends, and that doesn’t sit very well over a cocktail.
Ms. Weissman said she may have a bit of her own artwork at the show, though her main job now is to make sure everything is up and running when it needs to be. “We are no longer the sheepherders and the fishing people of the Hamptons. Some of the finest artists are tucked into our woods.”
The 24th annual Show on the Montauk Green will be held from Friday, August 17, through Sunday, August 19. Hours are from noon to 6 p.m. on Friday, and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Admission is free.
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on Aug 14, 2018