Year in Review: 2023 Brought Art, Literature & Comedy to East End
By David Taylor
What a year 2023 has been for the East End arts scene! Let’s recap five of the biggest developments, shall we?
Since 1987, Dan’s Papers covers have showcased the art of East End and international artists. For our first cover of 2023, however, Managing Editor Oliver Peterson was eager to experiment with art created by artificial intelligence, a hot-button issue now that was even more hotly debated last winter. An artist himself whose toy photography debuted on a Dan’s cover for Halloween 2022, Peterson posited that “learning how AI art is made is a key part of understanding the controversy currently swirling around its use.”
The January 6, 2o23 cover was the result of his prompting the Stable text-to-image AI art algorithm to recreate the Montauk Lighthouse in an anime style, and many people would not have known it was created by AI at first glance.
Once readers did realize it was AI art, the response was as if the end was nigh for genuine cover art. “AI is not art. What about promoting the art of all our East End artists? So lame, Dan’s Papers, do better,” read one comment on the Instagram post.
Rest assured that the AI cover was conceived as a one-time experiment, after which we had planned a year’s worth of real artwork created by talented artists. In fact, 2023 saw many first-time cover artists permanently etched into the history of Dan’s Papers. A few of the local artists who debuted on the cover of either Dan’s or Dan’s Papers North Fork include Diane Alec Smith of Cutchogue, Scott Hartman of Riverhead, Joel Perlman of Water Mill, Will Ryan of Amagansett, Jennifer Jo Contini of Southampton and John Melillo of Eastport.
On the topic of Dan’s history, the paper’s founder, Dan Rattiner, gifted his life’s work to Stony Brook University early this year. His physical collection of Dan’s Papers included every issue of all the newspapers once under the Dan’s umbrella, such as The Montauk Pioneer, The East Hampton Summer Sun, The Southampton Summer Day, The Sag Harbor Pilot, The North Fork Free Enterprise and The Hampton Exchange.
Stony Brook sees Dan’s Papers as a rich record of East End history and culture, and thus wants to ensure that record is made freely available to future generations both physically and digitally. Countless stories, photos, cartoons and covers that could have been lost to time will become easily searchable for the first time in years (if not ever). To cover the cost of digitizing and maintaining the collection at Stony Brook University Libraries, the Dan Rattiner Special Collections Fund was created to raise the $130,000 needed. Tax-deductible donations can be made at sbugiving.com/danspapers.
Between the once-annual Dan’s Papers Literary Prize event and East Hampton Library’s yearly Authors Night, East Hampton Village already had a reputation for welcoming big literary events, so when the village announced they’d be hosting their own event in 2023, it should not have come as a surprise. Oh, but it did.
The event unveiled was the Hamptons Mystery & Crime Festival, aka the Hamptons Whodunit, and the tentative schedule included all things macabre — authors discussing the dark places they’ll go to write from a killer’s perspective, true crime writers breaking down why the genre is a guilty pleasure for many, a man detailing his unforgettable time in a Manhattan cult, and a woman asserting the innocence of her sister who confessed to murder.
Most controversial of all was a panel discussion on the unsolved murders in and around Gilgo Beach, believed to be enacted by a singular Long Island Serial Killer. East Hampton Village event organizers stated that the intent was to shine a respectful, educational light on the cold cases and to hopefully inspire new evidence or witnesses to come forward.
The family of one of the victims strongly disagreed with the sentiment and petitioned for the cancelation of the festival, or at least the serial killer panel. In the end, an apology was issued, the panel was nixed, and the rest of the festival went on as scheduled. Now, having learned what worked and what clearly did not, organizers are hard at work carefully and thoughtfully planning the second Hamptons Whodunit for April 2024.
A Fine Year for Fine Arts
The East End is a place deeply ingrained in the stories of many world-famous New York artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and its arts scene continues to grow and develop year after year. Most closely tied to the area’s art legacy was the October debut of the Heroines of the Abstract Expressionist Era exhibition at the Southampton Arts Center.
The show shone a light on the East End’s most influential female artists who are often overshadowed by their male counterparts, such as Pollock and de Kooning’s wives, Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, as well as Audrey Flack, Hedda Sterne, Jane Freilicher and Jane Wilson.
Likewise, Renée Cox: A Proof of Being was a powerful showcase of works by a woman artist, photographer Renée Cox, and adding to its newsworthiness was its place as the first exhibition to be installed at Guild Hall, in the redesigned gallery space, since the art museum closed for renovations in 2022. The revamped space looks stunning and has lots of clever design changes like gallery skylights and a simplified foyer.
If stage one of the reopening process turned out this well, seeing the finished John Drew Theater revamp in 2024 will be well worth the long wait for stage two.
East Hampton brought art fans another exciting development this year: the inaugural East Hampton Art Affair. The two-day event made its debut in Herrick Park in June, offering the public an “unparalleled, artistic juried showcase of art across all media from 75 local and visiting fine artists.” Featured artists included Montauk mixed media artist Annie Sessler, Hampton Bays jewelry artist John Mutch and Israeli-born acrylic painter Smadar Livne, among others.
Southampton received a new art fair, too. Reimagining his September 2022 Southampton Art Festival, artist Angus Macaulay split the idea into two Southampton Fine Arts Shows in Agawam Park. Having dates in both June and August allowed a wider range of artists to participate in the event, and many proved eager to do so, as it’s one of the most intimate fairs in the Hamptons summer art circuit.
Perhaps the largest event in the summer circuit, the Hamptons Fine Art Fair, managed to expand even further. The 2023 fair introduced two new special events, the first of which was the announcement of a Hamptons Artists Hall of Fame. The inaugural induction ceremony honored well-respected East End artists, both living and deceased, including Fay Lansner, Cornelia Foss, Tony Rosenthal, John Ferren and Hans Van de Bovenkamp.
The second new addition was the Mid-Summer Bastille Tea Dance & LGBTQ+ Fundraiser, which auctioned off blue-chip art to raise funds for the nonprofit Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer Foundation.
Answering the Call for Comedy
In 2023, East End entertainers took a good long look at the types of entertainment on offer and realized the area was woefully underserved in the comedy department. One of the few ways to catch gut-busting standup out east was (and still is) Joseph Vecsey’s All Star Comedy at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, but the arts center had room for more laughs in its off-season schedule and comedian Paul Anthony seized the opportunity.
Known for his popular Long Island Comedy Festival, he adapted the successful formula to give Sag Harbor its very own Hamptons Comedy Festival, debuting the new series in April, then continuing with shows in the fall.
Meanwhile in Southampton, producers Abby Russell and Lynn Kaplan opened the Sticks and Stones Comedy Club inside the Southampton Cultural Center. Seeking not only to provide the village with a dedicated comedy club, but to heal through the power of laughter, Sticks and Stones debuted with a series benefiting the Comedy Fights Cancer nonprofit.
Southampton restaurant Main Prospect also made laughter a priority, co-presenting their Comedy Night series with Westside Comedy Club. The series featured talented comics from New York City and the East End including Bill McCuddy, Rachel Green, Joe DeVito, Kasia Klimiuk, Erin Maguire and Tom Kelly.
The Clubhouse Hamptons in Wainscott may have had the occasional standup act in 2022, most notably Amy Schumer, but this year, they really ramped up their comedy calendar. The summer featured comedians such as John Larocchia, Eric Haft, Mark Normand and the iconic Chelsea Handler.
A stone’s throw away from The Clubhouse, LTV Studios revived their Playwrights’ Theatre of East Hampton series in August. No, it’s not a comedy series, but its premiere reading was Aaron Posner’s Stupid F*cking Bird, a hilarious musical satire of Chekov’s classic The Seagull.
If that’s not comedy, what is?
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