A CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Boston filmmaker Bryan Papciak and Collision Works founder Shel Kimen develop Seafoam Palace: A Museum of Curiosity in Detroit. When Seafoam Palace opens in a decaying historical office building on Detroit’s east side in late 2015, Boston filmmaker Bryan Papciak will be an important engine behind this updated Renaissance “Wunderkammer,” or cabinet of curiosities. The museum’s orchestration of urban detritus, art and interactive installations grows from a collaboration of a score of artists united by curiosity about forgotten places and objects. In the midst of others constructing interpretive activities and displays based in fact, fantasy and absurdity, Papciak and writer/photographer Julia Solis are composing the aesthetics and historical, scientific and sociological thematics underlying the museum’s vision. In August, Papciak’s live-action animated … [Read more...] about Seafoam Palace, Detroit

TRAILBLAZER KARL KNATHS A brilliant retrospective of 20 stunning masterworks by modernist pioneer Karl Knaths is part of the centennial celebration at the Provinc- etown Art Association and Museum. Curated by Donald Beal, Robert Dutoit and John Frishkopf, this beautiful selection of paintings, on loan from private collectors and lending museums, spans from 1927 to 1970. Born at the end of the 19th century (1891) in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, Karl Knaths attended the Chicago Institute of Art in 1912. Working as a museum guard, he saw the 1913 Armory show when it came to Chicago from New York, and was so taken with the modern works of Paul Cézanne that his way of painting permanently shifted. He moved to Provincetown in 1919, meeting his future wife, Helen, a musician and pianist, and her sister, artist Agnes Weinrich. They had just traveled to Europe, learned about Cubism and shared … [Read more...] about Between Form and Freedom

THE COUNTRY'S OLDEST ARTS COLONY CONTINUES TO INSPIRE Twenty-three miles east of the Cape Cod Canal, on a natural spiral of sand, sits the oldest continuous arts colony in the United States. Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, Mass., is drenched in oceanic light that is a painter’s paradise. Artists began to discover its beauty in 1873 after expanded rail service brought them to an unspoiled fishing village. It was painter and teacher Charles Hawthorne (1872-1930) who attracted thousands of people to the Cape Cod School of Art, which he founded in 1899. Revered as a great teacher, he shaped his tenets around the French Impressionist School, the academic standard for training painters. His students learned using only a palette knife working from a model sitting on the beach. The weekly critiques, held in the Hawthorne barn atop Miller Hill, became legend. Other teachers of … [Read more...] about Provincetown Art Association and Museum

AUSTRALIA'S OUTER REACHES IN BLACK AND WHITE On the other side of the world on a tiny remote island, David Edgar finds inspiration. Seven of his large-format charcoal drawings will be included in a two-month exhibition at Jodi Robbins’ Cambridge furniture studio, newly christened as Half Crown Design. Edgar lives, works and plays tennis in Tasmania. Each year, armed with his video and still camera, he makes a foray out to the remarkable, minus- cule Tasman Island. The island is void of human habitation, now solely the domain of rare species of seabirds, penguins, seals and the region’s tallest lighthouse. The island is surrounded by steep, thousand-foot-high stone cliffs, making access by boat treacherous and ill-advised. Edgar arrives by helicopter along with a coterie of friends and associates, all members of an ecological team of environmentalists, stewards of the island, now … [Read more...] about David Edgar