Art Town, 1958

This summer more tourists than ever before are jamming the narrow, sloping streets of sun-bleached, wind-bathed Provincetown, Mass. (pop. 3,600) on the tip of Cape Cod’s hook. They shuffle barefooted and clop-clop in Japanese sandals; they peer at bronzed fishermen and pack swank souvenir shops; they fill the galleries, buy works of art. A town that has attracted art devotees for more than half a century, Provincetown has in 1958 become the U.S.’s undisputed summer art capital. The reasons: a new arts festival and a new art museum—both resulting from the aurous determination of Multi-millionaire Walter P. Chrysler Jr., 47.

Masters in a Church. “I used to come to the Cape as a kid,” says Chrysler, and I always think of the Cape when I think of vacation.” Last April he bought the former Provincetown Methodist Church for $40,000, had it remodeled into a fine small museum, installed a small part of his 4,000-work collection of masters. Then he startled easygoing Cape Codders by decreeing black tie the style at his lavish parties.* He sparked the move to stage a nationwide art festival, smooth-talked some 300 year-round residents into contributing their time and effort free “for the good of Provincetown.” He acts as second ticket-taker at his museum (and makes the volunteer workers pay the going $1.50 for the catalogue), while his wife Jean handles lunch-relief shifts at the festival gates. Some Provincetowners have found Chrysler’s headlong pursuit of culture distasteful, but they appreciate “the artistic climate created” by his enterprise.

Well lit and well designed, the new Chrysler Art Museum features 76 oils and 12 sculptures, ranging from Hieronymus Bosch to Picasso. Valued at $1,700,000, the exhibition is but a fraction of Chrysler’s total collection (“I began buying at 14, out of my allowance”), includes some topnotch masterpieces (Tintoretto’s Flora, Titian’s Portrait of the Admiral Vincenzo Capello, Soutine’s Valet de Chambre), as well as some not-so-great works by great masters (Renoir’s Pheasant, Derain’s Renaissance-style Portrait of Lady Adby), which have good names if not topmost quality.

Moderns in Tents. A few blocks away, in the shadow of the Pilgrim Monument marking the arrival of the Mayflower 36 days before it went on to Plymouth, seven green-hued, platoon-size tents, surrounded by the flags of 48 states and the District of Columbia (at least one work comes from each), make up the exhibition hall for the “Provincetown Arts Festival-American Art of Our Time.” Inside the tents, on long, wooden frame rows crowded too close for proper viewing, 400 paintings are hung alphabetically, a few inches apart. Badly lit, they nevertheless attract some 500 viewers a day, including a fair number of collectors who have already bought 53. The 400 were culled from 10,000 entries submitted to eight regional centers across the nation, then assembled at the Chrysler Museum for a final, prize-awarding judgment.

The winners (see color page), unanimously chosen by a three-man jury:* first prize ($1,500), Manhattan Abstractionist John Ferren, 52, for his The Birches; second ($750), Social Realist Semyon Shimin, 55, for his Discussion Groups—Rome, sketched in Rome during the 1956 elections but finished in Manhattan; and third ($250), Milton Goldring, 40, also a New Yorker, for his Shadow and Substance. The predominant tone of the festival is abstract expressionist, and imitative of the leaders of that movement.

The impact of the festival and the museum has been widespread. Last week, for the first time in its 89-year history, Provincetown’s weekly Advocate went to 16 pages. More artists have taken up residence; Milton Avery, John Hultberg, Mark Rothko have made Provincetown their summer home. New galleries are selling paintings faster than in Manhattan. More than just good business, 1958 has brought sparkling new life to the old culture of Provincetown.

* Now, for the first time, Provincetown has a shop thatrents formal wear.

*Charles E. Buckley, director of Manchester, N.H.’s Currier Art Gallery; John P. Coolidge director of the Fogg Art Museum; Andrew C.Ritchie, director of the Yale University Art Gallery.