After more than four months of programming limited to virtual platforms, Historic Huguenot Street has begun a gradual return to live events. The first was a revival of its day-camp program, Camp Huguenot, which relaunched on July 6 with each session capped at six campers and a one to three counselors-to-campers ratio.
Its initial big event to welcome all comers of all ages, however, was the return on August 1 after a couple of years of HHS’ popular plein-air paint-out, known as Artists on the Street.
In past years, this event culminated in the evening with a big art show and party under a canopy. Such mingling being dangerous these days, Artists on the Street was a less blatantly festive happening this past Saturday. As the afternoon waned, participating artists quietly put the finishing touches on their renditions of Colonial-era stone houses and other familiar landmarks, packed them up and took them home. The “show” of the finished products will happen online, both on the HHS website (www.huguenotstreet.org) and on those hosted by the artists themselves, as well as on social media, using the hashtag #aots2020.
It was a long, hot day, with the artists arriving to set up around 9 a.m. Visitors walking the grounds wore proper face coverings and practiced appropriate social distancing. Hand-sanitizer pumps were available throughout the site, including at tables where everyone was also encouraged to leave contact tracing information in the event of any reports of an outbreak. HHS wasn’t taking any chances of becoming the nexus of the latest cluster of coronavirus cases.
In keeping with the historic site’s commitment to celebrate the 2020 centenary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, you could register to vote with League of Women Voters volunteers as well.
Fear of contamination didn’t keep culture-starved visitors away, by any means. Emeline Hastings of New Paltz, who along with Mira Fink of Kingston was busy painting the rear view of the Hasbrouck House, reported that “at least 100” people had come by her workstation in the course of the day. A chalk circle had been marked off around each artist’s work area, although the changing position of the sun required them to reposition themselves at times so they could work in the shade.
Luckily, Hastings’ struggle had more to do with the lighting on her subject than with viewers crowding her space. “The light in midafternoon was so abstract on these stones,” she remarked to Fink as she touched up an area where she had previously scraped away oil paint. “Generally, people understood and had masks on,” said Hastings, whose work usually involves painting landscapes. It was her third time participating in the HHS plein-air event.
“Everybody’s been great,” agreed Fink, another Artists on the Street regular who was rendering the same building from a slightly different angle and in watercolor. She explained that participating artists are allowed to specify first and second choices of where they’ll be positioned throughout the ten-acre National Historic Landmark District. “The last time they did it was in 2017. I was working in the cemetery then.”
Montgomery resident Joseph Sundwall, a first-timer at the Artists on the Street event, hired his own model to sit in front of the Reformed Church in full Colonial costume. “Portraits are a fairly big part of my business,” which is based in the Studio Bag building in Newburgh, he explained. Sundwall also had no issues with viewers overstepping the boundaries established to protect the artists. “People were perfect. There was not anyone who trespassed.”
Would behavior have been so civilized once the wine started flowing at a post-event art show and reception? Perhaps not. But Historic Huguenot Street did manage to prove on Saturday that an outdoor public cultural gathering, within certain specified limits, is a goal that can still be safely achieved.
Join the family! 
