The Fredi Schiff Levin Lecture Series

The 18th Annual Fredi Schiff Levin Lecture Series has come to a close. All lectures from the 2021 season are available to be viewed on our YouTube page.

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, and to Amy Davies of Provincetown Television, who films the series and moderates the discussions.

The 2021 Series

Dr. Judith E. Stein is a writer and curator specializing in post-WWII American art. Her biography of art dealer Richard Bellamy, Eye of the Sixties, Richard Bellamy and the Transformation of Modern Art (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), earned praise in The New York Times for “recreating in stunning, touching and often humorous detail the chaotic, creative, still bohemian art scenes of Provincetown in the ‘50s and New York in the 60s.”

Dr. Stein’s talk at PAAM, “Bellamy and Ptown, a Fifty-year Love Story,” will center on the five-year lifespan of Bellamy’s fabled Green Gallery (1960 – 65). During these years, Bellamy introduced most of the iconic artists of the sixties, including Claes Oldenburg, Donald Judd and Mark di Suvero. An eccentric and beloved dealer with counter-cultural values, he believed you bought art because you appreciated it, not because it would appreciate. “There was no one like him,” said Leo Castelli. A Midwesterner whose mother was Chinese, Bellamy had the covert support of America’s first celebrity art collectors, Robert and Ethel Scull. At the invitation of Peter Hunt in 1948, the 20-year-old Bellamy first came to Provincetown, returning again and again for the rest of his life.

Image: Courtesy of Judith Stein

Josephine Halvorson is an American contemporary painter, sculptor, and print maker based in Massachusetts. Born in Brewster, she studied at The Cooper Union (BFA 2003), Yale Norfolk (2002), and Columbia University (MFA 2007). She is best known for her on-site paintings, drawing from scenes of the natural world and everyday life. Her work bends material fact and immaterial illusion.
Halvorson will discuss her career as an artist, from the beginning when she took Life Drawing classes at PAAM as a teenager, all the way to 2021, when she was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, and everything in between.

Image: Josephine Halvorson, here in her studio in western Massachusetts, is one of four artists selected to receive the Institute of Contemporary Art’s 2019 James and Audrey Foster Prize. Photo courtesy of Halvorson.

Francis W. Olschafskie has been a practicing artist for over twenty-five years. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Museum of Modern Art, Paris, the Isentan Museum, Tokyo, the Greek Ministry of Culture, Athens, the Tisch School at NYU, New York, the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Vermont, the Photographic Resource Center in Boston, and many more.

Mike Carroll, Owner of the Schoolhouse Gallery in Provincetown, MA. He attended Emerson College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston until he became involved in Boston’s then thriving underground scene. Since then, he has woven his own art making practice with fine art presentation in a variety of ways. He opened his first gallery, The 11th Hour, near Boston’s South Station, and has been the owner of the Schoolhouse Gallery since 2005. He is well known for presenting the finest in collaboration and new thought both in the gallery and with a variety of outside projects.

Olschafskie will discuss his current exhibition at PAAM with Schoolhouse Gallery Director Mike Carroll. On display are pictures with a single in camera transfixion captured through the lens, displaying an array of multiple images. The delineation is rendered by reflection/projection, and through glass portrayal of what is in front, what is all through, and what is behind.

Olschafskie will begin with a presentation related to the museum exhibition with a Q&A to follow.

Image: ©Francis Olschafskie, Flowers, London UK, (detail), 2018, 40 x 60 inches.

Sasha Chavchavadze is the founder of Proteus Gowanus, an interdisciplinary exhibition/event space that was a cultural hub in Brooklyn for ten years. Her paintings, drawings, and installations have been exhibited widely, including: Luise Ross Gallery; Cooper Union Gallery; Rotunda Gallery; Kentler International Drawing Space; and Arkansas Art Center. Her work has been presented in MoMA workshops, TEDxGowanus and on BRIC TV, and published in Cabinet and Bomb magazines, and as a book (Museum of Matches, Proteotypes 2011).

JoAnne McFarland is Artistic Director of Artpoetica Project Space in Gowanus, Brooklyn which focuses on the intersection of words, visual art, performance, and installation. Her past exhibitions include: Mending at 440 Gallery in Brooklyn, Both Directions at Once at KALA Art Institute in Berkeley, CA, and The Black Artist as Activist at The Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn. McFarland’s artwork is part of the public collections of the Library of Congress, the Columbus Museum of Art, and Dynegy Inc. among others. Her latest poetry collection is the digital bookwork Tracks of My Tears.

The co-curators will be discussing the SALLY Project, which has work on display at The Wellfleet Historical Society; FARM Project Space; WHEN Studio, and a virtual exhibition at The Wellfleet Public Library.

SALLY Wellfleet brings together twenty–three artists, writers, and historians intrigued by how the quest for intimacy can alter the trajectory of a woman’s life. Some explore the narratives of women, like Sally Hemings, whose destinies are inextricably interwoven with those they knew, and whose lives have often been erased or forgotten. Others infuse their work and methodologies with an urgency that underscores their compulsion to map their own and others’ undaunted passion and drive.

DNA evidence confirms that Sarah ‘Sally’ Hemings and Thomas Jefferson had several children together. While a teenager in France with Jefferson’s family, Hemings had a chance at full freedom, but returned to America with Jefferson in 1791 when he was 47 years old. Many historians believe Hemings was already pregnant with her first child by Jefferson when she returned. She lived out most of her life as a slave on Jefferson’s Monticello plantation, in quarters adjacent to his that have recently been restored.

Image: Sasha Chavchavadze, “No Words”, Installation Shot, SALLY Brooklyn Exhibition, Artpoetica

Art historian Mary Abell will discuss the Leo Manso exhibition at PAAM. Leo Manso (1914-1993) was a significant artist and educator in both New York and Provincetown art circles and helped to foster Provincetown’s reputation as a major art colony. He was the primary force in organizing two important cooperative galleries in Provincetown: the 256 Gallery (1951-1957) and Long Point Gallery (1976-1998), the longest-lived and most influential artist-run gallery in Provincetown’s rich history. Manso and the painter Victor Candell established the Provincetown Workshop (1958-1976), which became what the artist historian Dorothy Gees Seckler described in a 1965 interview for the Archives of American Art as “easily recognized as the most important school at this time” in Provincetown.

Using interview clips from the Archives of American Art, Mary Abell will guide the audience through the past, discussing Leo Manso’s work and his influence on American art history.

Image: Leo Manso, Encyclical, (det) collage, 39″ x 32″, Provincetown Art Association and Museum Permanent Collection.