ART IN PROVINCETOWN
Various Locations
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Any trip out of your normal loop yields opportunities to view art that is new to you–even when the subjects are familiar.
A recent trip to Provincetown afforded some viewing pleasures. I spent part of a rainy morning at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM). It’s a compact facility with a small permanent collection and relies on special exhibits to fill out its tourist season. The exhibits come and go, but I saw a now-closed photography show that’s emblematic of the sort of below-the-radar programming done by PAAM and analogous vest pocket museums. It featured the work of Rowland Scherman (b. 1937), one of the first Peace Corps shutterbugs. He is best known, though, for album covers, music shots, and images from the 1960s.
I admit to having mixed feelings about the sudden spate of images pertaining to the 1960s for what they imply about an overemphasis of Baby Boomer expression in American culture, but there’s no denying Scherman’s eye or his crisp darkroom work. Scherman captured the changing of the guard heralded by the exuberance of The Beatles in their mop top phase, and the contrast between the youthful visage of John F. Kennedy and the rumbled, thinning-hair gaze of Lyndon Johnson. It’s how we always think of them–JFK the kid and LBJ the old man, though Johnson was only 9 years Kennedy’s senior. Scherman shows how the camera can document, as in an iconic shot of the Washington Monument looming over the Reflecting Pool crowd as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. Yet Scherman also shows how the camera can mislead. He also made Pete Seeger look youthful, though he was just two years younger than Johnson. It’s all how you frame it, friends.
The PAAM had a few familiar artists on display, like Jaspar Johns and Robert Motherwell, but I enjoyed seeing works from those whose names were new to me, such as Agnes Weinrich, Nanno De Groot, and Charles Hawthorne, and a handful whose names are lost even to the staff. Alas, it’s not unusual for wonderful artists to work in near or total obscurity. Just ask
Vincent Van Gogh!
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| Agnes Weinrich |
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| Charles Hawthorne |
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| Nanno De Groot |
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| Unknown |
P-town is also a great place for public and street art. I’ve posted Alice in Wonderland and other fanciful images in the alley beside Shop Therapy before, but here are a few others that caught my eye. The moral of the story is keep your eyes peeled when away from home. You never know what you’ll stumble upon.
Rob Weir
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