On July 29, The Thomas Moran Trust will host the Midsummer Cocktail Party to raise funds for a restoration of the historic Thomas Moran and Mary Nimmo Moran Studio on Main Street in East Hampton Village. The event, which will take place at The Studio, will bring together benefit committee members and the public in support of the restoration project.
Landscape painter Thomas Moran designed the house, built in 1884, and called it The Studio. The space remains as he and his wife, printmaker Mary Nimmo Moran, lived in it, including Moran’s studio and the gardens and outbuildings, as well as the main house’s rooms. This was the first artist’s studio built in East Hampton, and served as an art colony at the turn of the 19th century. In 1965, the site became one of the first National Historic Landmarks in America.
“It is really the Morans who jump-started East Hampton as an artists’ colony,” says Richard Barons, executive director of the Thomas Moran Trust. “Their extraordinary Victorian turreted studio, built in 1884, will be a center for the story of artists, landscapes and seascapes, and why the South Fork lured painters to this beautiful tip of Long Island.”
“We are very excited about our summer event; with the exterior restoration nearly complete, the proceeds from the event will help us toward our goal of completing the interior restoration and opening the house to the public next summer,” explains Curtis Schade, the Trust’s chairman.
All proceeds from the party will benefit the restoration of the studio.
