Jo Sandman: Recent Gifts to the Permanent Collection

This exhibition features a selection of works by the artist Jo Sandman that were recently donated to PAAM’s permanent collection.

Jo Sandman began her career in 1951 with a residency at Black Mountain College, studying with Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell. For more than six decades, she has been actively exploring her art as a sculptor, painter, photographer, and installation artist. Sandman’s innovative artistic practice explores complex interconnections between the physical world and the structural underpinnings of abstraction. Working with a variety of materials, including traditional artist tools and supplies, found objects, industrial hard goods and soft goods, Sandman realigns the connections between painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, and assemblage with highly personal imagery. Each outcome is a supposition about the natural world and her own self-study.  Earlier works were minimal and abstract, yet with each evolution she has referenced previous images creating a continuous and expanding body of work. The process has always been as important as the subject matter.

As an artist and educator, she has taught at Wellesley College, The Art Institute of Chicago and Massachusetts College of Art and Design. In 2023, PAAM acquired 25 of her works through the Jo Sandman Legacy Project. The collection will be presented for the first time as a solo exhibition.

Sandman’s work appears in numerous private and public collections, some which include: The Addison Gallery of American Art, The Boston Public Library, The Dallas Museum of art, The Danforth Museum of Art, The DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, The Rose Museum, The Seattle Museum of Art, and the Weatherspoon Gallery at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

PAAM is incredibly grateful to Jo Sandman, her family and Katherine French for this important gift.

THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

The permanent collection is an important measure of any museum’s value. At PAAM, the holdings of local and regional art is extensive and dynamic, comprising more than 4,000 works by over 900 artists who have worked in Provincetown and on Cape Cod. The PAAM collection weaves together at least three major art movements—each a significant strand of American art history—and creates perspectives that uniquely position the Provincetown Art Colony as a pertinent fixture to the larger art world. We extend our deepest gratitude to our new and continuing donors.