The Fredi Schiff Levin Lecture Series

Fredi Schiff Levin (1915-2002), untitled (man in landscape), detail, n.d., oil on canvas, PAAM Collection, Gift of John Levin, 2003

The Fredi Schiff Levin Lecture Series welcomes artists, art historians, curators, and authors to speak at PAAM, both in conjunction with exhibitions and as independent scholars.

The series was established in honor of artist Fredi Schiff Levin, an active member of Provincetown’s arts community from the 1960s until her passing in 2002. We extend our deepest gratitude to The Levin Family, who graciously sponsors this series.

Watch all lectures from our 2023 series on our YouTube channel.


The 2024 Series

Fredi Schiff Levin Lectures are held on Thursdays at 6pm (doors open at 5:30pm), and livestreamed on YouTube channel. Admission to lectures is included with Museum entry ($15, free for members).

THURSDAY, MAY 23 AT 6PM:

Artist Rosalind Pace discusses her exhibition, Poiesis: Five Decades of Collage.

While best recognized in literary circles for her vivid and stirring poems, Rosalind Pace has simultaneously nurtured her passion for visual art. As a director of the Long Point Gallery and teacher of creative courses at Castle Hill Center for the Arts, PAAM, and elsewhere, she has long spurred creative expression in others. Now, through this exhibition, viewers can discover Pace’s own lyric style realized through intricate collages crafted over five decades.

THURSDAY, JUNE 13 AT 6PM:

Artist Julia Salinger discusses her exhibition, The Insistence of Memory, with curator Susie Nielsen.

“Why do we choose to retain certain moments and filter the rest, while other lost fragments emerge years later?” In Insistence of Memory, artist Julia Salinger explores these questions through objects, drawings, poetry, paintings, prints, and video installation. Intertwining visual creations and the written word, Salinger layers memory and narrative to uncover and generate meaning. Her work includes paintings mounted on various materials (cloth, silk, plastic), works on paper, imaginary archeologist series “Lost Letters”, sculptural objects, and more.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27 AT 6PM:

Curator Dr. Barbara Wolanin discusses the exhibition The Radiance of Color: The Paintings of Sam Feinstein.

Sam Feinstein (1915-2003), whose paintings are not well-known today, was an outstanding and remarkable colorist. He was inspired by six decades of summers experiencing the light and seascapes of Cape Cod and by his involvement with the art community especially during the crucial ten years he lived in Provincetown. This exhibition includes early sketches from the 1940s through his monumental masterpieces of the 1990s.

THURSDAY, JULY 18 AT 6PM:

Exhibiting artist Ron Amato discusses his exhibition, Artists of Provincetown, with curator Pasquale Natale.

This exhibition highlights artists with deep ties to Provincetown, the oldest continuous artist colony in the United States, during the early 21st century. Made over a period of eight years, Ron Amato has created eighty-four deeply penetrating portraits which illustrate the breadth and depth of the community. Making use of the color and light which is uniquely Provincetown, Amato’s imagery is both dynamic and authentic. Ron’s ability to reveal truth within his subjects, while heightening the environmental elements within a photograph is what makes these portraits so special.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12 AT 6PM

Exhibiting artist Susan Bee discusses her exhibition, Eye of the Storm.

Susan Bee has the wonderful distinction of being a painter of metaphors and symbols that invoke a host of associated meanings in which one thing stands for another. Her canvases are filled with these suggestive images, embedded in chains of substitutions and allusions that lead us from their apparent form into imaginative realms. The result is that her imagery escapes the narrow designations of figurative or representational art.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 AT 6PM:

Exhibiting artist Richard Neal discusses his exhibition, I Know the Pieces Fit, I Saw Them Fall Apart.

Richard Neal was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Maryland. He earned a Master’s degree at the Cranbrook Academy of Art and works at Chalkboard Studio in Barnstable Village on Cape Cod. His work was recently featured in a three-city tour of Cuba. Richard is the inaugural recipient of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod Fellowship. The writer, André van der Wende has observed that “Neal is a master at creating distressed surfaces full of invention and the unexpected, tough and confrontational in their manufacture and effect.”