The sixth edition of Upstate Art Weekend (UAW) was launched in Kingston, New York, by Helen Toomer, who founded the festival in 2020. The inaugural event featured 23 participants and coincided with a significant relocation of artists and affluent individuals to the Hudson Valley during the pandemic. This year, UAW's participation has expanded to 158 artists across a large geographic area. The local real estate market reflects ongoing changes as median home prices have surpassed $300,000 for the first time.
I woke up in June [2020] and realized how lucky and privileged we were to have space and trees. So many of my friends in the city were just losing their minds.
The inaugural edition of UAW, which featured 23 participants, came at the right time. While artists and the art-adjacent have slowly filtered up to Hudson and the surrounding region since the mid-2010s, the exodus from New York City surged in 2020.
Now, UAW's participants have grown to a whopping 158 stretching across 6,000 square miles, south to north from Tarrytown to Stamford.
In January, Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress reported that the median home price across the region's nine counties topped $300,000 for the first time.
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