It’s Memorial Day, and Molly Channing, Cornelia’s mother, is at the grill flipping hotdogs and hamburgers. The gravel crunches as more and more guests arrive with romping dogs, small children, and cases of seltzer. Local artists Scott Bluedorn, Ellie Duke, Harris Allen, Julian Mardoyan-Smyth, and Nick Whelan are scattered across the lawn. “The social life out here is crazy,” Cornelia notes. “There’s a huge number of people between 25 and 40 who live here year-round, and that’s really changed everything.”

The Hamptons of Cornelia’s making is a far cry from the $10,000-bottle-service scene patronized by linen-wearing frat boys and investment bankers. Her East End world revolves around a tight-knit network—group chats for potluck dinners, late-night screenings, and midnight ocean plunges. “The dream,” she says, “would be to invite more artists to bring their work to the sculpture garden. We’ve also talked about creating a residency where a wood sculptor could use the old studio.

“We’re a real functioning art community,” she adds. “My friends are ambitious—not just about themselves, but about this place too.”

Community Galleries

Thirty minutes down the South Fork, where Montauk’s strip dissolves into dune and scrub, another unconventional art space is quietly reshaping the landscape. Max Levai, 37, a former Manhattan dealer who once ran Marlborough Gallery, relocated to the East End during the pandemic and took over a 17th-century cattle ranch—believed to be the oldest in America. Once owned by Mickey Drexler, the 26-acre horse farm sits on a sandy road a stone’s throw from Peter Beard’s house and the Roosevelt estate. It’s now home to The Ranch: a working gallery housed in a converted horse barn.

“The idea here is to challenge what a gallery needs to be,” Max explains, as Monday, his 95-pound Rottweiler-hound mutt, does laps in an empty sand ring. Unlike the white-cube spaces lining Main Streets across the Hamptons, The Ranch invites artists to commune, work, and show on the rustic property. “I wanted to see what happens when you bring artists to a certain place and just let them exist and make art,” Max says.

The first permanent structure at The Ranch isn’t a gallery wall—it’s a living sculpture by Mamoun Nukumanu Friedrich-Grosvenor called Earth and Sky. Built from willow and bamboo, the 40-foot-wide geodome is planted directly into the field, its woven frame designed to shift and root further into the earth over time. Within five years, the willow will hold itself up entirely, and the bamboo will disintegrate. “There’s a commitment here that goes beyond money,” Max says. “There’s a responsibility I have in maintaining something that’s alive.”