Lecture with Bill Evaul: Drawn Together – Trailblazing American Women Artists in Belle Epoch Paris

An international symposium focusing on American women artists, with particular attention to the women artists of Provincetown, will take place October 11–14 at Columbia University’s Global Center at Reid Hall in Montparnasse, Paris.

Among the presenters at the symposium will be Bill Evaul, who will explore the important role played by Provincetown’s women artists and their presence on the international stage of art and culture.

Upon his return to Provincetown, Bill will present an illustrated lecture at PAAM sharing highlights and insights from the Paris symposium, with a particular focus on the remarkable history and contributions of Provincetown’s women artists.

The setting for the Paris symposium is especially significant. From 1893 to 1914, Reid Hall was known as the “American Girls’ Art Club,” an affordable and secure residence for women artists. It provided a restaurant, studios, exhibition space, a conference hall, and private gardens—all in the heart of Paris’s Left Bank, where many of the era’s progressive artistic ideas and movements were taking shape.

Bill’s lecture at PAAM will bring this fascinating history home, connecting the story of Reid Hall and the international community of American women artists with the extraordinary artistic legacy of Provincetown.

BIO: Bill Evaul is a painter and printmaker who studied at Syracuse University, the Whitney Museum and Pratt Institute with Jacob Landau and George McNeil. He received two fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and has lived and worked on outer Cape Cod ever since, giving lectures, leading workshops, producing artwork in a variety of media, and specializing in the white-line woodcut. As a contributing writer for Print Review and other magazines, he produced reviews and scholarly articles, including The Provincetown Printers: Genesis of a Unique Woodcut Tradition, which helped in the revival of the obscure and nearly lost technique. Evaul’s work is in numerous public collections including The Museum of Fine Art Boston, The Library of Congress, Robert Blackburn’s Printmaking Workshop, The Zimmerli Museum of Art at Rutgers University, The Georgia Museum of Art, The Sunrise Art Museum, The Kresge Art Museum, and The Provincetown Art Association and Museum.