When he leaves East Hampton for retirement, Richard Barons will leave behind big shoes to fill — most likely a pair of shoes dating back to the 18th or 19th century, donated by a family that lived here for generations and whose original owner, judging by the worn soles, might have been a merchant or a schoolteacher.
That is the kind of pleasant diversion one might encounter in a conversation with Mr. Barons, the former executive director of the East Hampton Historical Society and more recently its chief curator. There is a story behind every artifact. Chances are he can tell it to you, and he prefers to do that than wax poetic about himself.
“I’m an employee. In the nonprofit world, it’s never about you,” he said in an interview this week. “It’s about how you get everybody working together to do things. You may curate an exhibit, but it’s not your exhibit, it’s the historical society’s exhibit. We’re usually trained not to say ‘I’ very often.”
He and his wife, Rosanne Barons, who has also had an influential hand in historic preservation here, will leave in mid-January for Cape Cod, 23 years after arriving on the South Fork. Sitting in the Moran House and Studio, next to an antique printing press that took five people to move into place, Mr. Barons assured a visitor that he won’t lose the history bug — he plans to be involved with a preservation group there in some capacity.
“I don’t know if I’ll write a murder mystery, but I might. I’ve always wanted to write a mystery,” he said, before giving a brief summary of the plot (which won’t be mentioned here, just in case he does get around to writing it).
“We totally love East Hampton. I just think it’s time — 23 years is a long time to be in a place that’s not necessarily your hometown. It’s time for a change.”
It isn’t old shoes that pique his curiosity the most, but historical
furniture and art, connecting his college studies in the history of art and architecture with the history of East Hampton itself. Mr. Barons first came here in 1997, accompanying students in his classes at SUNY/Broome Community College, not long after Robert Hefner, another herald of history here, published a book about East Hampton’s historic architecture. It got his attention. “That’s when I started to think this was a great place.”
A few years later he began working for the Southampton History Museum, specifically with its Halsey House, on South Main Street.
“There was a cot in the kitchen in the 18th century for a slave,” he said. “People were totally intrigued, fascinated, horrified — I’m not sure which — to think there was slavery up north, because textbooks have been so coy about approaching that.”
It was in Southampton that he met and worked with Mr. Hefner, the longtime East Hampton Village historian, also a recent retiree, who said this week that he was happy for Mr. Barons on the occasion of his retirement. “We had a lot of fun” working together, he added. He certainly has given a lot here over 23 years. “He had quite an extraordinary run of historic projects.”
Mr. Hefner and Hugh King, the longtime director of Home, Sweet Home, who perhaps completes the trifecta of guardians of history, agreed that it will be tough to replace Mr. Barons in his curatorial role. “Everyone thinks that I’m the expert on East Hampton history, but the real expert is Richard,” Mr. King said. “Everything that I talk about when I go out and talk, pretty much I’ve learned from Richard Barons and Bob Hefner. They just don’t wear a funny hat and a cape.”
Stephen Long, the historical society’s new director, said Mr. Barons “has been such an incredible leader” and that “we’re going to miss him tremendously.” Mr. Barons has pledged though that he is “only a phone call away — and we’re going to take him up on that.”
