SAC Ends Its Season With A Culinary SummerFest

The last week of August melding into the first week of September has traditionally marked the somewhat somber transition from sun and sand back to school and work.

While this is a period that comes with a sense of dread for some, for others it is a time of palpable relief.

That’s because by this point in the season, many — well, okay, most — people who live on the East End are ready to bid the warm months and summer visitors farewell and are looking forward to a well-deserved rest. As the crickets’ late summer chirps fill the night, East Enders can sense quieter days ahead, signaled by a nip in the air and slightly earlier sunsets on the horizon.

Which means it’s a time of celebration for those of us who call this place home.

Among them is Simone Levinson, a founding co-chair of the Southampton Arts Center board, who is looking forward to Thursday, September 1, when SAC gets the offseason started with SummerFest. The annual culinary arts festival and fundraiser for SAC features chefs from notable East End restaurants preparing signature dishes for the event’s 350-plus guests.

This year’s benefit will honor Helena and Rob Vahradian with the 2022 Champion of the Arts Award and includes an appearance by Broadway star Jessica Vosk (Elphaba in “Wicked”), who will perform a medley of songs.

After dinner and some dancing, SAC will present the first SummerFest After Dark party for the younger set, which will go until the wee hours in the SAC theater.

Throughout the evening, SAC’s galleries will be open for guests who can check out “Figures Transformed,” an exhibition curated by Christina Mossaides Strassfield featuring artwork by East End artists Deborah Buck, Hal Buckner and Strong-Cuevas.

This year’s SummerFest will be SAC’s first full-scale benefit since 2019 — COVID-19, of course, shut the party down in 2020 and a scaled-down dinner party was held in its place last year. It makes sense that so many local eateries and artists would be a focus of this late summer party, given that, since its inception, SAC was designed to be an arts center of, by and for the local population, supplemented with occasional offerings by larger institutions based in the big city.

So while Levinson readily concedes that there may be four changes of weather in this part of the world, she strongly objects to the notion of using the word “seasonal” in describing the offerings at SAC.

“We’re open year round,” Levinson states. “I’ve eliminated the word ‘season’ from our vocabulary.”

And it’s largely worked out that way, with art, film, music and wellness offerings presented all year round, even during what is typically the dormant time of year. So when you think about it, there’s a certain symbolism in an organization focused on the local community hosting a gala that is not on a Saturday in July but rather on a Thursday in September, marking the end of summer.

Some might say that it’s the epitome of local hubris. But, in fact, the selection of the first Thursday in September as the traditional date of SAC’s SummerFest benefit was more a matter of practicality than anything else.

It all began a dozen or more years ago, when the Parrish Art Museum announced that in 2012, it would be leaving its original home on Jobs Lane and moving to a new building in Water Mill.

With the Parrish’s longtime presence in the center of Southampton soon to be a thing of the past, a group of concerned citizens, Levinson among them, met with Southampton Village officials to brainstorm about what might come next for the property. One of the worries was that with the Parrish’s departure, the historic building might be transformed into a high-end retail outlet for a national brand, thereby ceasing to be public space. So they got together to do a feasibility study and came up with the plan for what eventually would become the SAC.

“We thought, where is the opportunity here and what more can the building be?” Levinson recalled. “I grew up in the arts and, as a young mom in New York City with young children, I had no bandwidth to see shows. Out here by the beach, we had plenty of time, but there was not much available except movies at the theater on Hill Street and Vivian & The Merrymakers in the park on Wednesday.

“We saw an opportunity to bring in great programming from the city — like Lincoln Center, and the Met Opera — and offer more than just visual arts, but also things like dance and theater. What about emerging East End artists who can’t get a show in the Parrish? How can their careers be cultivated, amplified and incubated?”

Ultimately, the SAC vision was to repurpose the historic site, maintaining it as a building for cultural content for the village, but also expanding it in a dynamic and organic way that served and promoted the local community as well.

“The first year in 2013, we were only open three months and didn’t know what we had and how people would respond. But we had 10,000 visitors without a lot of capital, and there was reason to believe there would be traction and we were satisfying a need in the community,” Levinson said. “We opened nine years ago with a continuation of our feasibility study and haven’t looked back.”

These days, SAC’s mission and focus is well-established, but as a brand new organization a decade or so ago, there was still a lot to figure out — including what kind of fundraiser SAC should host.

“I’m a retired event producer. When people support you for a benefit, you don’t punish them,” said Levinson. “It’s a party, not a symposium. It’s an opportunity to create an event that reflects who you are and what you do without drawn out speeches.

“We needed it to encapsulate what we are — an organization that supports art and artists and the economic and cultural vitality of the village, shopkeepers and restaurants specifically,” she added. “So sitting around the table in spring 2014, we said we need a benefit. But we were the new kid at the dance, and no one was going to give up a Saturday night for someone they didn’t know yet.

“We decided, okay, so the last week of summer everybody is out here. Let’s create a Saturday night event on a Thursday. Instead of hiring a caterer that would cost a fortune, let’s showcase the celebrated chefs and restaurants and do a food festival for and by the community,” she explained. “We got 26 restaurants to establish food stations and made the ticket affordable. It was like a hybrid — not a dinner, not a cocktail party.”

And in the end, SummerFest became, as had the vision for SAC itself, a true celebration of community.

“It was breaking down social and demographic silos of the village. Meadow and Gin Lane residents were arm and arm with the owners of the restaurants — or gardeners — all at a community event together,” Levinson said. “I get moved when I think about it. It takes our mission statement off the paper and makes it a visceral experience. We knew we had something and built it out, we included dancing under the stars, a stronger dinner program, getting more tables, and it morphed into something for 350 people.”

Though COVID-19 shut down the SAC SummerFest benefit in 2020 and forced it to morph into a patron’s dinner party for just 50 in 2021, Levinson notes that people still wanted to contribute financially to help SAC in its mission.

“The support of the patrons dinner kept us open. I got a note from someone I didn’t know who said, ‘When all the museums closed, you made art accessible. It was so nice and came at a perfect time,’” Levinson said. “I thought, ‘Wow, how many people are out there that I’ll never meet who feel this way?’ It was very gratifying, and why I do this.”

And as Levinson explains, there was another really good reason for holding a benefit on the first Thursday of September.

“The end of summer was good because we needed to raise the money. It was very pragmatic and, as it turns out, it lets us build momentum,” Levinson said. “We did not want to cross over to take away from other institutions who had established those dates, so we carved our own way.

“I call the event ‘sunset of the summer,’” she added, noting that even the SummerFest invitation this year references the changing colors of the horizon as the sun goes down at this time of year. “It’s so gorgeous and transcendent, and I want to suck the marrow out of those moments. It’s one of the last events on the cusp of summer going into fall, and a wonderful way to mark the moment and mark the day.”

SummerFest is Thursday, September 1, at 6 p.m. at the Southampton Arts Center, 25 Jobs Lane, Southampton. The benefit and culinary arts festival honors Helena and Rob Vahradian (who is SAC’s treasurer) with the 2022 Champion of the Arts Award. Following the main event will be SAC’s first-ever SummerFest After Dark party which will run until 2 a.m. and is organized by and for the next generation of SAC supporters. The Summerfest initiative is responsible for generating a third of SAC’s annual contributed income. Tickets start at $1,000, with tables beginning at $10,000. For more information, visit southamptonartscenter.org.