Art is power, and powerful.
When Nazi Germany backed Spain’s fascist dictator General Francisco Franco in the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica to utter ruins on April 26, 1937, killing over 1,600 unsuspecting citizens — mostly women and children doing their shopping on an otherwise typical market day — Pablo Picasso made sure the horror would never be forgotten with his famed anti-war protest work, “Guernica.” The painting was censored and banned in Picasso’s native Spain until 1975, when Franco died.
Art — be it paintings, sculpture, music, performance, film or writing — changes what we see and how we think. It can make us deeply sad, furious, joyful, mirthful, confused, breathless, bemused, moved to action, struck to stillness and contemplative. Be it paintings, sculpture, music, writing, the intangible yet utterly mighty forces that compel works to be made? They’re nothing short of breathtaking.
I love our Arts & Entertainment Issue. I get to feel all those feels (or at least a bunch of them) as we get out and about to take a deep dive into the culture that’s right at our feet here in the Hamptons.
Maybe one of my favorite meandering interviews ever is my long and lovely conversation with the inimitable musical journeywoman Cynthia Daniels. Daniels started her career in the ‘70s, always intrigued by music and sound. Her work as a producer and sound engineer has garnered her two Grammys (so far) and brought some iconic names to MonkMusic, her East Hampton-based recording studio (Sir Paul McCartney, anyone?), as well as local troubadours and everyone in between who wants their work to sound the best it can. But she’s also a soulful, big-hearted proponent of the connecting power and beauty of music, whether that’s in her studio, sitting on the board of directors for the Sag Harbor American Music Festival or jamming with a circle of friends. If music makes the people come together, Daniels is a behind-the-scenes force drawing you into it.
The first time I visited the Southampton African American Museum in the summer of 2024, not only could I feel the force of all the work that went into making this important institute a reality, but I felt not just a little in awe of founder Brenda Simmons. She knew to her core that the story of the Hamptons wasn’t just some alternative universe of frivolity, high hedges and glammy summer parties. There are communities here — in this instance, the South Fork’s Black community — that deserve a permanent home for their stories and the art that conveys them, and a committed curator and steward to make sure that happens. Chrissy Sampson dove into SAAM’s origins, from the beginnings of the barber shop-turned Black art institute to Simmons’s driven, never-say-die tenacity in bringing this important piece of history and the work of Black artists to life.
And hey, if you ask me (and many, many others), food is art, too. Nourishing, joyful, beautiful and sometimes even pivotal in bringing people together. Staff writer Emily Toy broke bread at the burgeoning communal dinner club Midnight Pasta with its founder, Natalia Lepore Hagan, at a pasta-producing, merrymaking dinner held at her fashion designer aunt Nanette Lepore’s Springs home. She noodles over Lepore’s new make-and-eat gathering dinners coming to the Hamptons this summer.
There’s a bunch more to see, experience, ponder and please in this issue. I hope these pages inspire you to get out and look, listen and see what this season holds — let it move you like only the muses can. For such a small stretch of land, it really does feel like the art world is our oyster here. Go getcha some!
Amy Zavatto
Editor-in-Chief
