The Sidewalk Art Show

Founded in 1930 by society illustrator and painter Maud Stumm (ca. 1870-1935), the Sidewalk Art Show was an outdoor exhibition mounted every August for several days, originally along the walls of the Atheneum, but later on the Sanford building at Broad and Federal streets. Open to all artists, amateur or professional, the show attracted hundreds of visitors to admire and peruse the often freshly painted works by island artists. It featured the work of as many as fifty artists at a time, with up to three hundred works on display.

The Sidewalk Art Show was a phenomenal success. The Inquirer and Mirror credited it with being the first of its kind in the nation, and called Nantucket “the cradle of the movement which has brought art … to the ‘man on the street.’” In its first year, some three hundred people visited the exhibition, which included works by more than twenty painters. The Inquirer and Mirror reviewer wrote: “The wide shady walk by the library was an ideal place to examine and discuss Art and the beauty of Nantucket, which was the principal subject of the oil, water-color, black and white studies displayed. Little children, tourists, sailors, townspeople came again and again, eagerly examining the varied aspects of the Island, and deciding which was truest to life.”

Emily Hoffmeier took over the direction of the Sidewalk Art Show after Stumm’s death in 1935, and continued the tradition at the Sanford building for many years. The Sidewalk Art Show became a regular offering of the Artists Association of Nantucket, a popular feature of the art landscape on Nantucket into the 1980s.