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The Provincetown Independent
Arts Briefs for February 22 through February 29, 2024
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Art as a Family Affair
Artwork by members of 37 Cape Cod families is the subject of “Familial,” an exhibit currently on view in the Hope McClennen Gallery at the Cape Cod Museum of Art (60 Hope Lane, Dennis). Along with works from the museum’s permanent collection, the show includes gifts from Provincetown’s Berta Walker Gallery that allowed “a more complete picture of these creative families,” according to Museum Director Benton E. Jones in a statement accompanying the exhibition.
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The Provincetown Independent
Arts Briefs for February 29 through March 7, 2024
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Celebrating the Art of Richard Pepitone
Provincetown artist Richard Pepitone’s five-decade career is being celebrated in “Portrait of an Artist,” a retrospective currently on view at the Cape Cod Museum of Art (60 Hope Lane, Dennis). Pepitone, who died in 2022 at age 86, was known for his mastery of multiple media. The exhibition, which is on view through May 19, includes sculptures (in bronze, copper, polyester resin, birch bark, and other materials), glass and ceramic vessels, paintings and drawings, stained-glass panels, monoprints, paper collages, and art made from found objects
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Enterprise Newspapers
February 9, 2024
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Exhibit Highlights Artwork Of Artist Families With Cape Cod Connections
“Familial,” a new exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, highlights the relationships of Cape Cod artists (and those with a Cape Cod connection) through artworks curated from the museum’s permanent collection.
The exhibition groups together the art of 37 families; spouses, parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins et cetera. All artists are from or have a connection to Cape Cod. Wall text for the show was researched by the Cape Cod Museum of Art docents.
The show features a mix of living artists and artists who were seminal to the Cape’s past such as Harry Holl, founder of the Cape Cod Museum of Art and Scargo Pottery; and noted sculptor Arnold Geissbuhler, Harry Holl’s father-in-law.
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The Provincetown Independent
Arts Briefs for January 11, 2024 through January 18, 2024
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Art That Reveals The Process
“Sketchy: Revealing the Process,” a member’s juried show at the Cape Cod Museum of Art (60 Hope Lane, Dennis), features 55 pieces along with the original sketches used to create them. The exhibition is curated by Jackie Reeves, who lives in Sandwich and works out of Chalkboard Studio in Barnstable Village.
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“One of my greatest joys when looking at art is getting up close to see how a work was made,” says Reeves. “I’m drawn in when I see evidence of the artist’s hand in the form of an unfiltered and direct touch on a surface.” Reeves selected the works in the show from a pool of 192 pieces submitted by 106 artists.
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Friday December 29, 2023
Cape Cod Times
by Frankie Rowley
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'Pixels': Cape Cod Art Museum hosts its first exhibition of digital art
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Tucked away in the back gallery of the Cape Cod Museum of Art sits a collection of artwork, unlike the rest that fills the museum. Printed copies of the collection hang on the walls but the intended way of viewing the work is on a screen.
It's a new experience for attendees and the first juried digital art exhibition — titled "Pixels" — hosted by the museum in collaboration with the National Association of Digital Artists.
“There was a lot to consider because the museum had never done anything with digital art before and it was really out of our comfort zone,” Benton Jones, director of art, said.
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Thursday, September 20, 2023
The Provincetown Independent
by Abraham Storer
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LARGE SCALE
Murals That Expand Beyond the Walls
An exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art features paintings both indoors and out
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DENNIS — When Samuel Tager was asked to curate a show at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, hehad been thinking a lot about mural projects in Boston, Lynn, and Worcester. Murals typicallyhave a life outside of museums, which was one of the reasons he was attracted to the artform.
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“Good mural artists really engage with the public,” says Tager. “They can beautify a place butnot necessarily be part of gentrification. They give people in the community a sense of pride intheir place.”
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Friday, September 1, 2023
Enterprise Newspapers / Capenews.net
by Joanne Briana-Gartner
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'Endless Imagination of Bob Staake' is a Visual Cornicopia
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“It is often said that artists see the world differently than you and I - that they think "outside the box."
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Chatham artist Bob Staake not only thinks outside the box, he often thinks of the box in a new way, creating art from corrugated cardboard(" Corrugated Castle")......
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August 3, 2023
The Provincetown Independent
by Dorothea Samaha
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Bob Staake Does It His Way
The prolific illustrator’s bountiful retrospective is ‘not even one percent’ of his work
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“I can tell you right now as a fact,” says Bob Staake, “that a six-year-old child has never walked into a bookstore and laid down $18.99 for a children’s picture book. It’s never happened — OK?”
He should know. Staake has written or illustrated more than 75 children’s books. To sell books, he says, it is the parents and grandparents from whom Staake must elicit “a snicker or a giggle.” Staake, who lives inChatham, has also published illustrations in the NewYork Times, the Washington Post, the Los AngelesTimes, the Miami Herald, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Yorker. He clearly knows how to engage grown-ups.
But at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, where“The Endless Imagination of Bob Staake,” an exhibition spanning 50 years, is on view through Oct.15, grown-up museum goers might feel they’ve become children again.
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July 6, 2023
Cape Cod Chronicle
by Tim Wood
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Chatham Artist’s First Solo Show Opens At CCMoA
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In a career that’s spanned more than 40 years and included some 80 books, thousands of newspaper and magazine illustrations and many New Yorker covers, author and illustrator Bob Staake has never had a solo show of his work.
Until now.
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“The Endless Imagination of Bob Staake” will be on exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis from July 12 to Oct. 15, with an opening reception on Friday, July 14 at 5:30 p.m.
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Summer Guide, 2023
Provincetown Independent
by Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
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A Walk in the Dunes with Jane Paradise
Where the light chances in an instant, a photographer has to be ready.
Jane Paradise begins a spring walk into the Provincetown Dunes ath the same spot where we she first encountered them in the 1960s, as a child on summer vacation.
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April 28, 2023
Cape Cod Times
by Gwenn Friss
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ArtWeek: Dozens of Cape museums lay out the 'red carpet' in May.
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The Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis has a special exhibit covering a century of Cape Cod sculptors from its 220 pieces, many of which have never been shown before.
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February 10, 2023
Cape Cod Times
by Gwenn Friss
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Wine, music and pasta: Mangia al Museo at Dennis Art Museum
It’s all about the bowls.
Well, the more than 300 twice-baked, handmade, no-two-alike ceramic bowls — plus the pasta sauce from six local chefs competing for bragging rights at Cape Cod Museum of Art’s seventh annual Mangia al Museo 2023 fundraiser.
Although the event is not until March 11, the 250 tickets are on sale now and going quickly, so museum officials are getting the word out, said Joyce K. Groemmer, marketing manager for the Dennis museum where the event will be held.
“And part of the biggest news is that we’re doing it again in person after two years of virtual events,” Benton Jones, the museum's director of art, said.
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January 18, 2023
Cape Cod Times
by Heather McCarron
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Focusing on the dune shacks:
Provincetown photographer crafts book of 'primal landscape'
Jane Paradise shares experience Jan. 20 with talk slide show at Cape Cod Museum of Art,which will exhibit her dune shack photos May 3 to July 30.
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Jane Paradise has long been attuned to the alluring call of the dunes and felt the pull toexplore their austere beauties, to enwrap herself in the sounds of rising and falling waves,wind-surfing gulls, susurrating sea grasses, and endless grains of sand skittering and shiftinglike infinitesimal shards of glass.
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January 11, 2023
The Provincetown Independent
by Abraham Storer
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Reconsidering the Artistic Legacy of
Charles Heinz -
His paintings of local landscapes reveal a bold and visionary artist
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A fickle system determines which artists are remembered and which are forgotten. The OuterCape has its canon of artists. Some are known internationally, like Edward Hopper, whileothers are remembered more locally. But some have fallen offthe radar.
Charles Heinz was active in Provincetown from the late 1920s until his death in 1953. Although unassuming, he built a solid reputation for himself.
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December 21, 2022
The Provincetown Independent
by John D'Addario
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Margo and Zimilies:
Ukrainian Roots Both Subtle and Explicit
Two exhibitions at the Cape Cod Museum of Art reflect the heritage and resilience of the Ukrainian people
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DENNIS — The Ukrainian flag — unfamiliar to many before this year but now ubiquitous — is an abstract landscape: a brilliant blue sky above the golden expanse of a field of wheat. It’s not just an emblem of Ukraine’s sovereign identity but a kind of minimalist work of art in itself.
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Two current shows at the Cape Cod Museum of Art provide opportunities to engage with Ukrainian-inflected visual culture. A compact retrospective of previously unexhibited works by Boris Margo from the museum’s collection provides a valuable introduction to (or for some, a reminder of) a notable 20th-century Ukrainian-born artist with a long connection to the Outer Cape. A concurrent show by Margo’s nephew Murray Zimilies addresses the atrocities of the 2022 Russian invasion — and the resilience of the Ukrainian people — in a suite of five powerful large-scale mixed-media paintings.
November 4, 2022
The Enterprise Newspapers/Capenews.net
by Joanne Briana-Gartner
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Cape Museum Of Art's 'Fragile' Is Evocative And Compelling
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I suspect I’m not alone in thinking things are on the verge of imploding locally, nationally andaround the world. What keeps you up at night? The housing crisis? Inflation? Climate change?Gender and race inequality? War in Ukraine? Your children’s future? Your grandchildren’s?
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In their show at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, artists Frank Anigbo and Richard Neal convey the emotions brought on by the fears that simmer beneath the surface for many of us. They didn’t do it individually, but collectively their show “Fragile” is both the comfort of family and the burning urgency to act.
Burn it Down by Richard Neal. Photo by Robert Nash.
October 26, 2022
The Provincetown Independent
by Abraham Storer
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Arts Briefs
Painting the Fragility of Human Experience
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The work of Frank Anigbo and Richard Neal is a provocative study in contrasts. Anigbo’s is delicate, with subdued color; Neal’s is at the other extreme, with its dramatic use of color and fiery imagery. “Fragile,” their two-person exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art (60 Hope Lane, Dennis), raises questions about race, domesticity, innocence, and violence.
September/ 29, 2022
Cape Cod Times / Barnstable Patriot
by Barbara Clark
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Cape artists pair paintings in exhibit that calls attention to 'fires ignited by racism'
The surprise of contrasts and connections lies at the heart of a new exhibition at Cape Cod Museum of Art, where two Barnstable artists have come together for an unusual pairing in the aptly titled show “Fragile.”
Paintings by Frank Anigbo and Richard Neal will share the walls of two galleries at the Dennis museum, which will display close to 25 of their works from Oct. 6 to Dec. 31.
Museum officials have described the show as “a commentary on the literal and figurative fires ignited by racism.” The artists, who worked independently, realized that in pairing their work in one show there was “a combined power greater than the sum of the parts,” according to museum information.
September/October 2022
Cape Cod Life Magazine
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FRAGILE
The literal and figurative fires racism ignites will be the focus of the Cape Cod Museum of Art's exhibit Fragile, featuring the paintings of artists Frank Anigbo and Richard Neal and the poetry of writer and visual artist, Lauren Wolk.
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While Anigbo's paintings, done in an ethereal palette, focus on the vulnerability of families living in a racist world, Neal's works are radically different, bold, dark, often depicting infernos in the act of destroying human creation. Together
the two present a study in contrast.
The Painter's Daughter, Frank Anigbo
Photo by Robert Nash
2022
Provincetown Arts
by Lauren Walk
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Truth and Beauty: The Fragile Exhibition
Art by Richard Neal and Frank Anigbo
WHEN RICHARD NEAL AND FRANK ANIGBO ASKED ME TO CURATE AN EXHIBIT OF THEIR ART, I was honored and intrigued, and curious about what I’d find when I met them on a cold afternoon late in 2021 to look at their combined work.
Neal is a sixty-six-year-old white man who makes art at the Schoolhouse Studios in Barnstable Village. Some of the paintings he showed me that day were of simple structures that felt like sanctuaries, but most were filled with fire. Raging, uncontrollable flames consuming the homes of the poor. Anigbo is a fifty-five-year old Black man who works in his home studio a short walk from the Schoolhouse. His paintings were primarily of his beautiful family. His wife. His young son. His tiny twin daughters. The soothing features of the home they share. I looked at the disparate images. The artists asked what I thought. My reaction was immediate and absolute, but I was still shy about giving it.
Richard Neal and Frank Anigbo, 2022
Photo by Robert Nash
October 13, 2022
The Provincetown Independent
by Abraham Storer
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Jack Coughlin Makes His Marks
A retrospective charts the artist’s 60-year fascination with people and animals
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Jack Coughlin’s Golden Cod Gallery has been a Wellfleet mainstay since he and his wife JoanHopkins took over the space in 1964. The low-lying shingled building stands near a bend inCommercial Street across from Uncle Tim’s Bridge and Duck Creek. The couple, both artists,have used the space to display Hopkins’s landscape paintings and Coughlin’s graphic work —usually portraits and pictures of animals.
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August 12, 2022
The Enterprise / Capenews.net
by Joanne Briana-Gartner
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An Impressive Retrospective Of Brewster Artist Donald Stoltenberg Now On View
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Acclaimed artist Donald Stoltenberg (1927-2016) lived on the Cape for more than 50 years. And while many of his contemporaries were reveling in the natural beauty of the Cape, representing its marshes, dunes and expansive sky and beaches in their work, it wasn’t the natural beauty of the area that Mr. Stoltenberg took inspiration from; it was its manmade structures. “His interest in architecture and engineering informed his art. For him, these forms were as dramatic as nature’s wonders,” writes Deborah Forman, guest curator of a retrospective of Mr. Stoltenberg’s work.
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February 25, 2022
The Enterprise / Capenews.net
by Joanne Briana-Gartner
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Upper Cape Artists Well-Represented In Cape Museum Of Art Collection
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Patron of the arts Ann F. Bengtson was instrumental in procuring art for not only the Cape Cod Museum of Art but for the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Cape Cod Hospital and Falmouth Hospital, and other institutions on the Cape.
While she was collecting, Ms. Bengtson gifted more than 75 works to the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, 63 of which are currently on display at the museum through March 6.
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High Rollers by Sig Purwin
February 2, 2022
The Cape Cod Chronicle
by Jennifer-Sexton-Riley
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CCMoA Bursts Forth With Exhibitions, Music,
Classes
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In the depth of winter, the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis is in full bloom.
After declaring a snow day, closing up for safety's sake during Saturday's blizzard and postponing a Sunday event until the white stuff melts, the CCMoA doors are once again open and ready to welcome the community to a full slate of exhibitions, a winter music performance series and classes for adults and children in such variety that you're sure to find one you can't resist.
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December 8, 2021
The Provincetown Independent
by André Van der Wende
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A Love Letter to Provincetown at the Cape Cod Museum of Art
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Cataloguing the 'magnificent obsession' of six artists.
Anyone who's spent time out on the tidal flats of Cape Cod Bay can attest to their allure. Stretching a mile or more at low tide, they can feel like a bubble in time, trapped between land, sea and sky. The flats are also a repository for things lost, tossed, and forgotten, because Provincetown Harbor essentially functioned as the town dump until the 1930s.
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For the six artist-beachcombers in the exhibition "Lost and Found: Time, Tide, and Treasures," on view at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis through Jan. 2, that detritus provides
both inspiration and raw material for their creative work.
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November 19, 2021
Enterprise Newspaper
by Joanne Birana-Gartner
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Beachcombing Collections Inspire Art Exhibit And Book
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"Lost and Found, Time, Tide and Treasures” at the Cape Cod
Museum of Art celebrates the history of Provincetown and the collector in all of us.
The show features six artists with ties to the tip of the Cape and
to each other, all of whom have relentlessly collected bits and
pieces from the Provincetown shoreline and used them, either
directly or indirectly in their work. The artists featured in the show are Amy Heller, Gail Browne, Judy Berkowitz,
Paul Bowen, Betty Bodian and Varujan Boghosian.
The show was meant to coincide with the release of the book
of the same title but COVID necessitated postponing the opening
of the show until this year while the book was published last year. Sadly in the interim, artist Varujan Boghosian passed away. The show is dedicated to him.
Ms. Heller and Ms. Browne co-authored the book as well as
curated the show.
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September 10, 2021
Cape Codder Newspaper/Wiickedlocal.com
and also in Cape Cod Times
by Rich Eldred
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Cartography exhibit at
Cape Cod Museum of Art
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ORLEANS -- In a GPS world, maps might seem quaint relics of the past. Some of us still use them for navigation, and they do indeed chart our past.
“The maps cover the past, present and future; where you came from, where you are and where you’re going to go,” explained Benton Jones, director of art at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, as he discussed "‘cARTography: Envisioning Cape Cod," an exhibition that ties in with the Dennis museum's 40th anniversary.
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September 8, 2021
The Provincetown Independent
by Saskia Maxwell Keller
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Walking Through- and on- History
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What happens when you put maps in an art museum? First, one starts looking at them as art. A 1647 map depicting New England and New Netherland, for example, has drawings of local
fauna: deer, foxes, bears, beavers. A colorful cartouche is crowned by the Dutch coat of arms.
One also starts looking at them historically. Critically....
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September 3, 2021
Enterprise Newspapers / CapeNews.net
by Joanne Briana-Gartner
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Show Depicting Voyages and Journeys
Marks Museum's 40th Anniversary
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In celebration of the Cape Cod Museum of Art's 40th Anniversary, the comprehensive exhibit "cARTography: Envisioning Cape Cod" has been on view this summer and will continue unto the fall, wrapping up October 3.
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"We wanted an exhibition that would highlight our anniversary and also be a metaphor for our journey," said Benton Jones, the museum's director of art...
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September 3, 2021
by Sawyer Smook-Pollitt
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A Voyage On The Cape
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The Cape Cod Museum of Art is on a voyage. That is how the museum’s Director of Art, Benton Jones, described the post COVID-19 world for the 40-year-old institution.The Cape Cod Museum of Art is hosting three exhibitions that explore the past, present and future of artistic expression in the Cape Cod area: “Vision 2021,” “cARTography: Envisioning Cape Cod,” and “Inspirations from the Dennis Conservation Land Trust” by the Printers of Cape Cod.Cape
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June 2021
Cape Cod Art / Art Annual Magazine
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A Voyage Fueled by Vision
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Forty years ago Harry Holl imagined a place where the art and artists of Cape Cod could shine. Today the Cape Cod Museum of Art celebrates a bright future..
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June 22, 2021
Beth Treffeisen, Cape Cod Times
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Back in the picture: Restored 1930s moviehouse murals to be displayed at Dennis art museum
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DENNIS — Two recently restored art deco murals not seen by the public in 50 years were moved into the Cape Cod Museum of Art Monday to be part of an upcoming art exhibit.
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The 10-foot-by-18-foot murals depicting an ocean voyage, which weigh about 300 pounds each, were last seen inside a Hyannis movie theater. They will be part of a show opening next week entitled, “cARTography: Envisioning Cape Cod.” Also on display will be rare historical maps of Cape Cod (dating from 1570); “Our Story,” "400 years of Wampanoag History; and an immersive installation by local artist and cartographer Mark Adams.
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April 27, 2021
Capenews.net / Enterprise Newspapers
Reception Is Thursday For Cape Museum Of Art Show
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“Visions/Revisions…stepping into the same river twice,” on view from April 22 through August 1, explores the theme of changing perceptions.
When creating a work of art, an artist may see her subject one way initially and then, at a later time, interpret the same subject quite differently. In this exhibition, each artist presents two works, related to each other but created at two different times with different media, approaches or vision.
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April 19, 2021
By Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll, Cape Cod Times
She's had enough: Artist adds to Dennis exhibit
as mass shootings continue
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DENNIS — Jane Lincoln has been creating a series of art pieces that
she wishes she could finish. But mass shootings in America just go on and on.
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The Falmouth artist’s “ENOUGH” pieces, now hanging as a group at Cape Cod Museum of Art, are a statement against gun violence, featuring what look like shredded bullet holes set against a variety of colors to represent lives lost to mass shootings.
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April 7, 2021
By Saskia MaxwellL Keller, The Provincetown Independent
Jane Lincoln Has Had ‘Enough’ of Gun Violence
Her paper creations are powerful and visceral
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“Enough is enough, and it’s time for us to take action,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse after the March 22 shooting at the King Soopers grocery in Boulder, Colo.
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At the time, Jane Lincoln was preparing for her show, “Enough,” at the Cape Cod Museum of Art. Hearing Neguse’s words was eerie, she says — almost like déjà vu. The yearning for action was why she embarked on the project in the first place.
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March 1, 2021
Patrick Flanary, Special to Cape Cod TImes
Promise is fulfilled as artist's paper-cuts added to Cape Cod museum collection
Patrick Flanary
Special to Cape Cod Times
Fifteen years after her death at age 96, Cape Cod artist Miroslawa Pissarenko is getting the last word on her legacy.
“Paper Talks,” showing through April 4 at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, is the only exhibition to ever recognize her take on the ancient craft of paper-cutting. The museum will also continue teaching that art at Tuesday classes through March 9.
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February 26, 2021
Barbara Clark, Barnstable Patriot
'Through Young Eyes' Cape Cod Museum of Art Celebrates Student Creativity
There’s an inspiring new exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum of Art – one that celebrates the talent and variety of Cape Cod’s young artists.
Artworks created by 50 students in more than a dozen Cape schools and art education programs are now displayed at the Dennis museum in “Through Young Eyes,” until April 18.
January 29, 2021
Enterprise Newspapers / capenews.net
New Shows Are On View at Cape Cod Museum of Art
Two shows opened this month at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis.
“Paper Talks: The Life of Miroslawa Pissarenko artist, horticulturist, teacher and friend” will be on view through April 4.
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Miroslawa Grabowski Pissarenko (1909-2006) believed that paper talked. She told this to her good friend Peter Michael Martin as she created Polish paper cuttings called wycniaki in her own intricate style, using only a pair of cuticle scissors.
January 27, 2021
Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll, Cape Cod TImes
Ready for COVID-inspired art? See that and 3 other new Cape Cod exhibits
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Excerpt:
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The new “Creature Comforts,” on display through May 2, is a docent-curated exhibition looking at the museum's collection through the lens of "what gives us comfort" in this time of the COVID pandemic. The display includes new pieces and old favorites representing comforts of home, human connection, nature, arts and crafts, food and animals. The exhibit includes some pieces that have not previously been exhibited as well as some old favorites. The museum also just opened “Paper Talks: The Life of Miroslawa Pissarenko,” showcasing the artist’s paper cuts and woodcarvings through April 4. “Changing Tide,” a juried members’ exhibition, continues through March 14; and “Ed Chesnovitch: Man on the Marsh” through Feb. 7.
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Top image: The Sled, Will Barnett, 1984
Bottom: Grandson's Sketching, Gladys Reed c 1960's
December, 2020
Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll, Cape Cod TImes
Artist's paintings document life on an East Sandwich salt marsh
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Ed Chesnovitch was unfamiliar with the terrain of a salt marsh when, 12 years ago, he bought a “run-down cottage” on the banks of Scorton Creek in East Sandwich. Scorton became his backyard, and he soon began kayaking to his working studio at the nearby historic “Bird Barn” he also bought.
Chesnovitch has since constantly walked and explored the marsh, both in person and in painting. In an artist’s statement with his new exhibit at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, he describes the marsh as “both invigorating and peaceful, mysterious and magnificent, placid yet teaming with energy and life.” He says he is fascinated by that juxtaposition.
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