In 1884, artist couple Thomas Moran and Mary Nimmo Moran built a summer house in East Hampton, New York, on the East End of Long Island. Designed in the Romantic Victorian cottage style, the 10-room home doubled as a shared studio for both Thomas, renowned for his landscape paintings of the American West, and Mary, a groundbreaking etcher and printmaker. The home is now a National Historic Landmark and part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios (HAHS) program, which honors the homes and studios of artists who lived and worked across the U.S.

A little more than two miles from the Moran home lived the Fowlers, an Indigenous Montaukett family. George Fowler worked for the Morans as a gardener. His wife Sarah and their daughters were talented artists in their own right, creating beadwork and weaving. The Town of East Hampton recently completed a restoration of the Fowler home.

The art of both Mary Nimmo Moran and the Fowler women was rooted in scientific principles, which elementary school students have had the opportunity to engage with thanks to a Dorothy C. Radgowski Learning Through Women’s Achievement in the Arts grant from the National Trust. Available exclusively to sites in the HAHS network, the grant supports the creation of new STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) educational programming for K-5 students. The grant was established in 2022 as a partnership between HAHS and the Where Women Made History program, which seeks to elevate women’s stories and increase gender representation in preservation practices.

The East Hampton Historical Society, which operates what is formally known as the Thomas and Mary Nimmo Moran Studio, used the one-time $17,925 grant to design and implement a hands-on, interdisciplinary, place-based program called “Artistic Identities: Using STEAM, History, and Artmaking to Understand Gender, Race, and Class.” Inspired by the restoration of the Fowler home, Steve Long, executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society, says the organization viewed the grant as “an opportunity to connect the creativity that Mary Nimmo Moran was expressing with the creativity the women of the Fowler family were expressing.”

“The East Hampton project is the perfect example of the kind of transformative work that’s possible—and needed —at historic places across the country,” said Chris Morris, senior director of preservation programs at the National Trust and manager of Where Women Made History. “Not only have they inspired hundreds of students, family members, and teachers through the life and artwork of Mary Nimmo Moran and Sarah Fowler, but they’ve updated school curriculum and built new relationships with their local school districts. All because they took the time to explore the many influential roles women played at their historic sites and in their communities.”

Learning Science to Art

Mary Nimmo Moran, who was elected to the Society of Painters and Etchers of New York and became the only woman among the founding fellows of London’s Royal Society of Painters and Etchers, used needles to create drawings on copper plates, which were used to produce prints using a press. As part of the Radgowski-funded “Artistic Identities” program, students in East Hampton explored the engineering aspect of Moran’s creative process by examining original plates and making prints of their own using a brayer. “We break down the gears of the press and relate that press and that design and that technique that Mary did to the windmills in our area,” explains Stacy Myers, director of education for the East Hampton Historical Society, who designed the program to align with state and national curricula.

Students were also prompted to reflect on the class differences between Mary Nimmo Moran, a white woman for whom East Hampton was a summer retreat, and local Indigenous women like Sarah Fowler, who wove and crafted beads as part of their livelihood.

Unexpected Outcomes

Valerie Balint, director of the HAHS program who administers the Radgowski grant along with Morris, was struck by how the “Artistic Identities” project “took on a life of its own.” “That nugget of thinking about Indigenous creative practices, anchored in these two women, led to a bigger discussion of Native peoples in this area, their rich artistic traditions, and that was particularly unique to this project. The lens became both deeper and wider, which expanded all the ways in which students could activate their own creative exploration,” she said.

For all parties involved, one of the most exciting and unexpected outcomes of the program was the impressive volume of artwork produced by the students. This inspired the East Hampton Historical Society to curate a student exhibition at the Clinton Academy, another nearby historic site, titled “Woven Through History.” The historical society envisions hosting the next one at the gymnasium of the local John Marshall Elementary School.