elaine k g benson, her daughter's column

By Kimberly Goff

Posted 01/30/09

Editor's Note: Kimberly Goff is the daughter of the late gallery owner, Elaine Bension. Goff wrote a column for two years after her mother's death, and continues to contribute from time to time. This column is in response to the recent demolition of the building that housed the Elaine Benson Gallery in Bridgehampton. - S.G., Managing Editor.

I moved to Bridgehampton in 1971, on the heels of the death of my stepfather Emanuel Benson. My brother, Bill, came a few years before, in order to help when my stepfather became ill and my mother needed help with the gallery. Elaine (my mother) and Emanuel Benson moved here in 1965. They rented a house in East Hampton that happens to be where Dan Rattiner now lives. There was a fire and the original house burnt down, but the property remains the same. That following year my mother and Emanuel bought the property at 2317 Montauk Highway, located across from the post office, in Bridgehampton. The gracious house was large enough to house the couple as well as visiting artists, and was the home of the original Benson Gallery. The house was unlike any house I had known from Philadelphia. It was built in the 1800s and there were architectural details that fascinated me. The ceilings upstairs weren't flat. The angles came in from different directions and there were old curved glass windows upstairs and in the front door. There was "gingerbread" trim around the eaves and a curved staircase with an amazing banister. The floorboards had been painted which seemed sad but you could see they were wide and old. In my room there was a huge walk-in closet. It was my favorite house of all time. In 1966, the barn and out buildings were renovated and added to.

At the time that I moved to Bridgehampton the offices for Dan's Papers were next door to us on the second floor of the house owned by Ron Ziel. That house is now owned by John Salibello and houses his antique store. My brother, Neal, also moved into my mom's house after high school and worked for Dan's Papers and Martelle's in Amagansett. I went to the Hampton Day School to finish high school and baby-sat for friends of my mother, including Dan and Pam Rattiner, when their babies were infants. The Rattiners were close family friends even then. They lived around the corner on Lumber Lane so I could easily walk over. My mother wrote a weekly column for the paper. She wrote it from shortly after the paper started until a week before her death from cancer in 1998.

This was a much smaller community in 1965 and although the Hamptons were clearly established as an artist colony, there were no galleries where those artists showed their work or congregated. Emanuel Benson was an art historian and had been the dean of the Philadelphia Museum College of Art. Elaine had worked as the public relations director at the same college. The school has changed names many times since the '60s and is no longer affiliated with the museum but is still there and well respected.

In 1974, I opened a boutique on Bridgehampton's Main Street, and I purchased the property a few years later from Nora Magee. She and her daughter, Mary Agnes, owned half of the north side of Main Street at the time. After I purchased the shop, I moved from my mother's house into the apartment above my store. It was only two blocks from my mother's house so I went "home" a lot and clients often visited both the gallery and the shop when coming through Bridgehampton. We were lucky enough to share friends and interests. My mother even bought most of her clothing from me, as did many of her friends and contemporaries, like Elaine deKooning, Elaine Steinbeck and Betty Freidan. Even Truman Capote was a customer. We never knew who was going to come by. I tried to have something for everybody and it was amazing to see the variety of people who came through the store. I organized my life copying my mother by working during the summer months and traveling during the winter. For years, mother went to Europe every autumn and often to the Orient in the spring. I went back and forth to Mexico.

In 1986, I sold my shop and went off to live full time with my husband in Mexico, where I could devote myself to my career as an artist. My mother had remarried some years before. She had help in the gallery and everything went smoothly. In 1992, I knew it was time for me to come back to work. I called and asked if she might be interested in my working for her, to learn the business. She said she would have to think about it and when we spoke a few days later she said she was delighted.

In 1993, I came back from Mexico to Bridgehampton, moved back into my mother's house, and went to work as her apprentice. She was incredibly generous with her information, her friends, her time and her house. I had a separate entrance, bathroom and a separate kitchen upstairs. The house was set up as two completely independent apartments. Mom and Joe lived on the ground floor and I had the upstairs to myself, unless they had houseguests. When my husband joined me the following summer, it was a little too close for comfort and we ended up buying a house just off the turnpike. I was incredibly lucky to find a foreclosure in Bridgehampton near where I grew up and near the gallery. Plus, I was on the board of the Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreation Center, so I knew many of my neighbors.

As it happened, my mother was widowed again in 1996 and I was widowed in 1997. We needed each other. We were fortunate that I was already living only a few miles away and working with my mother when she and her husband were both diagnosed with cancer in 1996. By that time, she had made me a partner in the gallery and she depended on me to cover for her whenever she couldn't be there. My husband was helping to take care of my stepfather and I was learning everything my mother could teach me. She wanted me to remember every story of the Hamptons. She was very secretive about her illness. She chose to tell no one. She said it would hurt the gallery and she didn't want anyone to look at her with pity. She finally knew it was time to tell everyone what was happening so at the very end of her life she told the story of her illness in her last column for Dan's Papers. She said she would miss everyone and hoped they would miss her.

The Gallery centered our lives in the Hamptons. It was never very profitable, but my mother lived in the house and loved her life there. She died at home surrounded by three of her four children and some of her ashes were buried under a cherry tree in the front yard. The tree lives on with a new home, as do the gallery archives, and collections, just as I do and I carry on the legacy.

My mother entrusted everything to me but also said, "Give it a try. Give it three years and see what you think." I gave the gallery eight years after she died. In that time we renovated the house and gallery completely. The grounds were gorgeous. Still, it wasn't as much fun without Elaine Benson. She was the life of the place. I could not and would not ever fill her shoes. Hundreds of people came by and admired thousands of works of art. People told me Elaine Benson stories. So many people came and told me how she had helped them. Even after her death, thousands of dollars were raised for charity. Many emerging artists got their start and we had two shows that were a Hamptons art history, including works from Pollock, Lee Krasner, both Elaine and Willem deKooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers and over 40 other artists from the previous generation of Hamptons artists. I followed the same formula as my mother did for most of that time. As always we had openings every three weeks with preview benefits for local charities. We helped many charities with these benefits. The Bridgehampton Child Care Center, CMEE, the Retreat, and The Nature Conservancy, The Group for the South Fork, Hampton Shorts, the Meet the Writers Book Fair for Southampton College, ARF, EEGO, and LTV are among the many organizations that held their fundraisers in a tent in the sculpture garden and in the buildings of the gallery.

I did not give up the gallery property and our wonderful Gingerbread Victorian without first trying hard to find a way to continue. Before my mother died, she told me there was a problem with the Certificate of Occupancy. She thought it would be an easy thing to deal with, but said she was too old and sick and she didn't have time. She knew I had a lot of experience building and renovating houses. It was only after I purchased the property from my siblings that it became clear that although the house had its C of O, the barn was on the books as a bar. I was told it would cost me over $50,000 and three years just to legalize the existing buildings and they were substandard for year-round usage. It would not pay for itself from sales. The business paid for itself, but there wasn't much left over and the property was expensive to maintain. I was not living in the house at that time. I heated it, kept it clean, and used it for entertaining. It was especially useful when we were having benefits in the gallery. After the first year, throughout all 42 years of the gallery, the gallery was made up of three unheated, uninsulated, single story buildings that could not be used on a year-round basis. It seemed better to hire a great architect and try to build a new building.

After many meetings with Preston Phillips, the most talented architect I know, we found the best solution to the problem of how to "save" the gallery: build a structure attached to the existent house that would mimic the original architectural elements and roof line. It took three years and a lot of compromise (as in 26 parking spaces and a promise that the second story of the existent house could only be used for storage) and finally the building was approved 100 percent by the Southampton Town Board. We had their blessing and, in fact, they said that Phillips was the most polite person who ever presented a project to them.

After we had Town approval for our new building, I tried to raise the money to build the new gallery. By that time I had realized the project was too big for me, so I tried to form a new organization called, "Friends of Elaine Benson." I even tried to sell the concept and plans to a potential new owner. It had seemed to me we could make the Museum of Art History of the Hamptons. We already have Guild Hall in East Hampton and the Parrish in Southampton. This would be completely different and in my dreams I could be on the board in the beginning and ultimately the gallery/museum could live on without me. We would have income producing rental spaces designed into the new building above the gallery and the house could remain untouched. I failed. I could not get enough people involved to raise the money and to write grants and get public funding, hire staff, and build the new building. It would have been beautiful. It ended up as only a dream, but a beautiful one at that.

When Joe Farrell offered to buy the property, he said he would try to save the house. It was in pretty good shape at the time so I was surprised when I read in a newspaper interview with Farrell that he was going to tear the house down. That was before the closing on the property. We had an agreement of sale only. Dan's Papers ran an article where I admitted to being very upset and Farrell offered to renege on the purchase. Unfortunately, I felt I had to go through with the sale and I realized that the new owner would have the right to do whatever he wanted to in accordance with the laws of the Town. I knew that the process of getting Town approvals is a long and difficult one. I understood I couldn't stop progress.

Mother always said, "We are liberals who hate change." What is done is done. I can't turn back the clock. What I can do is stay positive. I have 42 years of gallery archives to finish organizing, scanning, recording, and then finding ways to make them public. I need more interns and even grant writers. My desire is to open the records to students, professors, writers and aspiring painters. There is a wealth of visual information and the excitement I feel about this part of this story/history cannot be taken away.

My mother lives on in the legacy she left, the friends and artists who remember her, and in the book she wrote. She lives on in the cherry tree and in the archives. She lives on in the archives of Dan's Papers and in our hearts.

P.S. I took the front door with curved glass panes, the banister, the decorative windows from the upstairs of the house, and the gingerbread trim that my mother and I loved. I couldn't bear to see them destroyed.