This year PAAM’s popular Fredi Schiff Levin Lecture Series returns with a roster of presentations on contemporary artists and in conjunction with exhibitions in the museum galleries. In addition, PAAM is pleased to announce the 2009 Adele and Lester Heller Lecture Series, which will feature lectures on the art history of Outer Cape Cod. A total of twelve lectures will be presented June through September. This series began in 2003 in honor of the artist Fredi Schiff Levin, who was a member of Provincetown's arts community from the 1960s until her passing in 2002. PAAM gratefully acknowledges John and Toni Levin and Mildred and Herbert Lee, who make this program possible with their generous support. Lectures are free and open to the public. In memory of Mildred Schiff Lee, 1920-2009 Tabitha Vevers: Narrative Bodies, a Lecture with Curator Rachel Rosenfield Lafo Tuesday, June 9, 7pm The artist Tabitha Vevers creates personal narratives that explore the female body and sexuality while utilizing old master techniques. Her intimately-scaled compositions address socio-political issues that include war, AIDS, environmental degradation, and women's historical positions in society. The exhibition at PAAM (June 5-July 19) features 60 paintings selected from her series including Secular Icons, and Lover's Eyes. Join curator Rachel Rosenfield Lafo for a discussion of this mid-career survey exhibition. Ms. Vevers received her B.A. in painting from Yale University and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  She has received numerous awards and honors including a George & Helen Segal Foundation Grant, residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, Germany, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Sweet Briar, VA ‘86, ‘91, ‘93 and The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH. Rachel Rosenfield Lafo curated the exhibition, Tabitha Vevers: Narrative Bodies, for the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, where she was Director of Curatorial Affairs for many years. She has organized numerous exhibitions of contemporary art, authored many catalogues and essays, and has served as a juror, visiting critic, panelist, and lecturer. Her exhibitions and publications include: Photography in Boston: 1955-1985; Painting in Boston: 1950-2000; Presumed Innocence: Photographic Perspectives of Children; Drawn to Detail, and solo exhibitions of the work of numerous artists, including Mary Frank, Michael Mazur, Gregory Amenoff, and Gerry Bergstein. Lafo has also held positions at the Portland Art Museum, Oregon and the Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, and has taught courses in museum administration and curatorship at Tufts University and Boston University. She is currently an independent curator, writer, and art consultant. Window to the Sea: Birds, Light and Water: A Gallery Talk with Pat de Groot Tuesday, June 23, 7pm Join artist Pat de Groot for an illuminating discussion on her survey exhibition at PAAM (June 19 - August 2), which spans work created during her time living in Provincetown. The artist has said of her work and process, “I use what I see out of my window as visual stimulus to learn how to draw and to paint.” The exhibition includes calligraphic drawings of gulls, oils on paper, and an installation of cormorants drawn from life at the breakwater. The Painter's Process: A Lecture with Thomas Bosket Saturday, July 18, 3pm Contemporary artists are continually using or inventing techniques and the results are changing the way work appears and feels. Painter and teacher Thomas Bosket will discuss innovative and traditional approaches to painting media. Come find out about new ways to use old grounds, why acrylic gesso should NEVER be used under oils, what ground Elizabeth Peyton is using to get those oils to act like magic marker, how to make your own watercolors for pennies (not dollars!), and many other mysteries. This lecture is a primer for Bosket’s Museum School workshop The Painter’s Process, to be offered July 21-23. Thomas Bosket received his MFA from Yale University, developed an artists’ raw materials course at Pratt Institute and was awarded Distinguished Teacher of the Year at Parsons The New School of Design in 2002. During the last year he created a new Color Theory and Drawing curriculum for the AAS Degree at Parsons. As an undergraduate he worked in Broadway painting costumes, props, and sets for Beauty and the Beast, Ms Saigon, Jekyll and Hyde, and many other shows. He worked for several years with the Public Theatre on the main stage and on Shakespeare in the Park. Early on in his artistic career he painted faux finishes for homes in Williamsburg, VA and created window displays for Barney’s and Polo by Ralph Lauren. Anne Peretz: Director's Choice, A Lecture with Curator Chris McCarthy Tuesday, July 28, 7pm Join us as Curator and PAAM Executive Director Chris McCarthy discusses Peretz's exhibition of land and seascape paintings (July 17 - September 13). This exhibition features work created on Cape Cod, in which Peretz captures the changeable dunes, shore, and sky, all filtered through the artist’s unique sensibility. Chris McCarthy has been the executive director of PAAM since 2001. She has held positions at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Erie Canal Museum, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. She holds a B.A. from Providence College, a M.A. in Museum Studies from Syracuse University, and has taken coursework in nonprofit administration at Harvard University Extension School. Hans Hofmann: A Panel Discussion Tuesday, August 18, 7pm The German expatriate and abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) became the most influential teacher of modern art in the United States. His color theories and his legacy as a teacher continue to influence artists today. Former Hofmann students Myrna Harrison, Robert Henry, and Selina Trieff will discuss their experience with the artist in conjunction with In Search of the Real: Hans Hofmann and his Students (August 7 - October 11). The exhibition features the work of Harrison, Trieff, and Henry, as well as drawings from private collections and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Myrna Harrison has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions throughout the U.S. and is represented in the collections of the Rose Museum, Brandeis University, PAAM, and Cape Cod Museum of Art as well as in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. For the past 30 years she has lived in Arizona where she has been president of three community colleges. She is currently represented by Gold Nugget Art Gallery (Wickenburg, AZ); James Ratliff Gallery (Sedona, AZ); Beauregard Fine Art (Rumsfield, NJ); and Acme Fine Art (Boston, MA). Robert Henry’s numerous one-person exhibitions include the Cortland Jessup Gallery and Barbara Inger Gallery in New York, the Janus Avivson Gallery in London, and the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown. His work is in the collections of Brooklyn College, the Cape Cod Museum of Art, Columbia University, Pace University, and many others. He is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College. Selina Trieff studied with Hans Hofmann in New York and Provincetown. She received a BA from Brooklyn College where she studied with Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko. She is represented by the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown represented by George Billis Gallery in New York, and the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in California. She has shown extensively in the United States and in Europe. Her work is represented in many public and private collections, and she has taught at various colleges and art schools. Paula Horn Kotis: Photographs Saturday, September 19, 3pm Paula Kotis’s rich body of work spans the documentation of legendary artists and writers—including James Baldwin and Charlie Parker--to the street life of mid-20th Century Greenwich Village, to a series on Holocaust survivors traveling from Cyprus to Israel. Join Kotis for a discussion of her exhibition at PAAM (September 18 – November 15). A native of New York City, Paula Horn Kotis studied psychology at Hunter College, graduating in 1943. She learned photographic skills from her father in his Upper East Side portrait studio. Immersing herself in this work and eventually taking charge of the studio, Kotis began to produce and receive notice for her own pictures. Ms. Kotis studied the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson and others and commenced to produce a powerful body of photographs taken in New York and throughout Europe. In 1948 she made a remarkable series of images documenting the journey of Jewish Holocaust survivors for displaced persons camps near Famagusta, Cyprus to the port of Haifa in northern Israel. Ms. Kotis moved to Greenwich Village in the early 1950's where her friends were actors, musicians, artists and writers. She collaborated on projects with the novelist James Baldwin and the poet Frank O'Hara, and photographed jazz greats including Sarah Vaughan and Charlie Parker. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Ebony, Arts, Evergreen Review and U.S. Camera. Paula Horn Kotis lives in New York City and Wellfleet, Massachusetts.