‘Galleries Were Selling Paintings in the Dark’: Flooding Imperiled $400 Million in Art at a Hamptons Fair and Shut the Event Down Early | Canada News Media
The weekend’s heavy rains forced the early closure of the Hamptons Fine Art Fair at the Southhampton Fairgrounds.
Flooding caused by the rainfall, which measured between three and five inches according to the local office of the National Weather Service, was “impinging on electrical” components in the fair’s tents, Ryan Murphy, Southampton Town public safety and emergency management administrator, told Patch.
“The whole tent has gallery lighting, so there’s cabling all over over,” executive director Rick Friedman told Artnet News. “Fire marshals told us that for the safety of everybody we had to shut down and turn off the electricity.”
The forecast for Sunday had always called for rain, but the intensity of the deluge caught fair organizers by surprise.
“The rain started in the early afternoon, but by 2 p.m. it was pouring so much that we couldn’t hear ourselves talking,” exhibitor Emmanuel Fremin, owner of New York’s Fremin Gallery, told Artnet News in an email.
“It was an ‘act of god’ kind of thing,” Friedman said. “It was a torrential downpour like I haven’t seen in decades. The roads in town were basically closed. But nothing at the fair was damaged, because the walls were fine and there were no leaks from above.”
Flooding at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in Southampton. Photo courtesy of Emmanuel Fremin, Fremin Gallery, New York.
The fair closed three hours early, with an orderly evacuation—other than a rouge opera singer—and dealers had to unexpectedly leave their wares in the facility overnight.
“We had maybe $400 million of products in the building, so we got the police department in there and we quickly hired armed guards to secure the premises,” Friedman added. “The next day, the sun came out like nothing happened and everybody came back and got their stuff.”
“The smell of mold was intense the next day when we were allowed to pick up the works from our booths,” Fremin said.
Atmosphere at Hamptons Fine Art Fair opening night vernissage in Southampton. Photo by Patrick McMullan/PMC.
The fair, now in its fourth year, had a record 140 exhibitors and record attendance of more than 12,000 visitors before organizers had to pull the plug.
This year’s fair featured a rare loan of the famed Astor Place Cube, officially titled Alamo, which was removed from its home in New York’s East Village in May to conduct repairs.
Among the other highlights were a 50 million-year-old crocodile fossil, nicknamed Max, unearthed in Wyoming and on view with Green River Fossil Company of Logan, Utah; and a booth honoring the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso from Shapero Modern of London which was the largest-ever display of the artist’s work in the Hamptons.
Sales continued down to the wire, even as the rising waters spilled into booths.
“After we had to turn off the lights, there were actually galleries selling paintings in the dark. I couldn’t believe it. People were buying the works and walking out with them,” Friedman said. “M.S. Rau from New Orleans sold a $1.5 million Picasso over the telephone during the rainstorm!”
See more photos of the flooding below.
Flooding at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in Southampton. Photo courtesy of Emmanuel Fremin, Fremin Gallery, New York.
Flooding at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in Southampton. Photo courtesy of Emmanuel Fremin, Fremin Gallery, New York.
Flooding at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in Southampton. Photo courtesy of Emmanuel Fremin, Fremin Gallery, New York.
Flooding at the Hamptons Fine Art Fair in Southampton. Photo courtesy of Emmanuel Fremin, Fremin Gallery, New York.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
