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Storm Ascher On (Re)Building Black Arts Infrastructure in the Hamptons

With the Hamptons Black Arts Council, the artist, curator and gallerist aims to create a movement with a place in art history and academic discourse.

Storm Ascher has a reputation for wearing multiple hats: gallerist, curator, artist and community organizer among them. She has long advocated for art’s power to transform communities and lives, and her primary tool has been Superposition Gallery, a nomadic contemporary art platform that stages exhibitions and projects in borrowed or temporary spaces. Its fluid structure allowed Ascher to provide visibility and opportunities across geographies and contexts to more than 100 artists, balancing emerging voices with established figures while reimagining how and where art can be experienced.

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At the same time, she has forayed into context- and locality-specific cultural infrastructure creation with the Hamptons Black Arts Council (HBAC), which promotes and protects Black arts institutions, artists and cultural memory on Long Island’s East End. Through exhibitions, residencies, collection building and community partnerships, HBAC is developing the institutional framework needed to secure a lasting presence for Black artists in the Hamptons, while creating spaces of recognition and representation for the local Black community in an area increasingly associated with a predominantly white, wealthy and seasonal population.

This summer, Ascher and the Hamptons Black Arts Council are presenting a rich program that kicked off with the opening of two exhibitions: the group show “IT IS WRITTEN in the Sand” at the Eastville Heritage House Museum and Damien Davis’s solo exhibition “Hedges and Edges: Barbershops, Community Gardens” at the Southampton African American Museum (SAAM). There was also HBAC’s Artist’s Table at the Watermill Center (part of the organization’s annual three-day retreat), which included a presentation by artist Anthony Akinbola and a menu inspired by his artwork created by chef Roze Traore and raised funds for the organization’s expanding programs and permanent residency initiative.

When Observer spoke to Ascher, she described her work with the Hamptons Black Arts Council as an extension of the thinking behind Superposition Gallery. “We expand and contract with the space. We do not have a brick-and-mortar space; we always borrow,” she said. “I feel that in the Hamptons, this Black community has also borrowed........

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