The Tides of Provincetown: Pivotal Years in America's Oldest Continuous Art Colony (1899-2011)

The most comprehensive survey of America’s oldest art colony comes to Cape Cod Museum of Art! Organized by the New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, this significant collection, the CCMA’s most noteworthy exhibition of the year, includes the work of Provincetown’s most celebrated and influential artists. It is the largest and most comprehensive examination of the art colony to date; the last Provincetown survey (exhibited over 40 years ago) ended with artwork from the 1970s.
    The Tides of Provincetown focuses on Provincetown’s legacy as an art colony which the Boston Globe in 1916 described as the “Biggest Art Colony in the World”. The exhibition includes over 100 artists and as many artworks, from Charles W. Hawthorne, founder of the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899 — and, thereby, the colony itself — to Joel Meyerowitz in the present day.
    Divided into eight sections, the exhibition highlights key years and events in the art colony as well as Provincetown’s importance in American art history.

1899 Charles W. Hawthorne founds the Cape Cod School of Art
1914-27 The Provincetown Art Association and the “Modernist Split”
1927-31 Modernist breakthroughs featuring Blanche Lazzell, Ross Moffett, and the “Early Moderns”
1935-66 Hans Hofmann establishes his school and inspires generations of students
1950s Academic and Impressionist trends during the rise of Abstract Expressionism
1958-74 The Tirca Karlis Gallery brings “big name” artists to Provincetown
1968-98 Artists take action to restore the colony to its former glory
1999-2011 The Provincetown art colony today 

 Artists in the exhibition were selected based on their contribution to the Provincetown art colony as well as their influence beyond Cape Cod. With its focus on the key moments in Provincetown’s history, The Tides of Provincetown highlights artists who played a crucial role in the colony and were the important figures and artistic forces. Their presence in Provincetown as well as their influence on other artists through schools, mentorship, and/or the pure aesthetic power of their artwork is examined.
    While many of the artists worked or lived in Provincetown for years — such as Milton Avery, Charles W. Hawthorne, Henry Hensche, Hans Hofmann, Blanche Lazzell, Robert Motherwell, and E. Ambrose Webster—others “passed through” the art colony. Even if they were only at the tip of Cape Cod for a short period of time, the exhibition shows that many of the great artists of the 20th century — including Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, Charles Demuth, Red Grooms, Edward Hopper, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Andy Warhol — were inspired by Provincetown.