ART TALKS at The Artistic Forum

The Cahoon Museum of American Art

On Route 28 in Cotuit, on your way toward -- well -- almost anywhere east of Cotuit, there sits a small jewel set back slightly off the left side of the road that you might miss if you’re not looking carefully. It is the Cahoon Museum.

Named in honor of Ralph and Martha Cahoon, two of the Cape’s better known “primitive” folk artists, the red clapboard,1775 Georgian-style

home, with some 14 rooms and seven galleries, complete with cozy oriental carpets in each room, a fireplace and stenciled walls, is pretty much today as it was when Ralph and Martha first moved in in 1945 - which explains why you might mistake it for something less than what it truly is - a quality museum that showcases some of the finest contemporary artists and intriguing theme shows on the Cape.

Opened in 1984 the Museum, unassuming in its presence, attracts somewhere in the vicinity of 9,000 visitors each year, from as far away as New Zealand to Venezuela. Its guest book includes the names of tourists and buyers from 43 states. Its visitors and patrons have included Jacqueline Kennedy, members of the Dupont and Mellon families, and Josiah K. Lily III and his wife, Josephine, founders of the Cape museum complex of Heritage Plantation in Sandwich.

But if you were to ask Cindy Nickerson, Director of the Museum, what has pleased her most in recent years, she might just opine that it was the attention given last year when the Museum hosted the collection of Napi Van Derek, of “Napi’s Restaurant” fame on the outer Cape. “It’s still pretty neat that people from all over the world and country see the Museum,” she said, “but people from the lower Cape didn’t even know we existed.” It was the 2001 show, consisting of 50 works from Van Dereck’s restaurant collection that opened doors and put the Cahoon Museum on the map to residents north of Rock Harbor Rd. We’re talking Provincetown and Truro, here.

It is this willingness to experiment and seek out art in all mediums and styles that attracts and draws people in that is winning new converts to the Cahoon Museum’s front door. Kudos to its Director and her emphasis on offering both old and new works in a congenial, homey setting befitting the finest Museums in the area.

What to expect? Expect anything.

©"Still Life Bouquet" by Martha Cahoon
From the collection of The Cahoon Museum

©"Adam and Eve" by Martha Cahoon
From the collection of The Cahoon Museum

While Ralph Cahoon enjoyed painting whimsical portrayals of mermaids in different settings, although he didn’t limit himself to that subject matter, Martha’s worked tended to be more serious, tonal, muted. Still, it was her husband’s art that seemed to attract early attention. Martha’s golden-hued “Farm Scene” and “Harvest”, for example, as well as her floral depictions show a temperament for atmosphere and country life that is, indeed, “sophisticated” by primitive art standards. It was Martha, after all, who brought Ralph into the business of painting -- decorative furniture at first -- and then, later in the early-fifties, at the urging of Joan Whitney Payson, owner of the Long Island Art Gallery, into painting on Masonite, where both excelled at their craft and worked from their home until their deaths. Ralph died in 1982, Martha in 1999.

©"Seaside Harvest" by Ralph Cahoon
From the collection of The Cahoon Museum

©"Topless Swimsuits Forbidden" by Ralph Cahoon
From the collection of The Cahoon Museum

While the work of both Ralph and Martha is categorized as contemporary primitive, don’t let the word “primitive” fool you or discourage you from visiting this worthwhile Museum. It is, as Nickerson explains, “much more sophisticated than that.” Indeed, in 1960 the Vose Gallery in Boston, which doesn’t usually show primitive art, thought the work important enough that it exhibited their paintings in a special show. The work of the Cahoons represents both the individualized talent each had for painting and is truly representational, in the sense that it represents the best in the medium and subject.

Visitors to the Cahoon Museum, today, will be able to view some of both Ralph and Martha’s work, which is on display at all times, as well as shop at the well appointed gift store on the first floor. Also, part of the seventy work permanent collection, is the impressive marine art of James Buttersworth, the portraits of William Matthew Prior, and the work of other notables such as William Bradford, Ralph Blakelock, John J. Enneking, Alvan Fisher, and Levi Wells Prentice.

©"Cat Boats with Committe Boat"
by James E. Buttersworth
From the collection of The Cahoon Museum

To keep people coming, back, Nickerson realizes that the Museum has to offer more, after all, the permanent collection consists of seventy works, not a thousand. “If all we had was just a permanent collection people wouldn’t come back,” she acknowledges. “It’s not like the Metropolitan Museum or the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. Here, we have to keep the displays moving.” And so was born the idea of offering the work of other artists as well, in a unique and rather interesting thematic format.

Nickerson explains that the Museum hosts six or seven shows a season, five days a week, eleven months, discounting January, when they usually close to spruce up. But all other times, visitors can view shows that tend to follow a theme, an idea that seems to be catching on in popularity, and may very well be another Hallmark for the Museum. “I try to find the best artists that specialize in a subject,” she says, “and then build a show around those subjects.”

©"Come Winter" by Marieluise Hutchinson
from the "Winter Wonderland" exhibition.

In 2001, for example, “The Apple of My Eye” exhibit, featured works centered around “the fruit that tempted Eve.” The show included the art of Jan Collins Selman, Agnes Weinrich, Karl Knaths and Benjamin Champney. Another show, titled, “Winter Wonderland” featured the art of contemporary notables Marieluise Hutchinson, Jane Lincoln, Dodge Macknight, Curtis Rosser, and, of course, Ralph and Martha Cahoon. The show contained seventy winter scenes in all.

Beginning on February 1^st,and running through March 9, 2002 the Museum will host its first show of the 2002 season, titled, “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.” Nickerson says she came up with the idea of a patriotic show after the September 11th bombings of the World Trade Center. “I wondered what people were thinking about [after the bombings] and what could we do.” She says she was surprised to find the response from the artist community as positive as she did. “What I thought I’d find, I didn’t,” she says. “One of the positive things that came out of September 11th was the patriotic feeling of so many people.”

The list of Cape artists participating in this spectacular show reads like a Who’s Who of accomplished artists, and will include works that are both sentimental, such as Susan O’Brien McLean’s tribute to a friend of her daughter who died in the attacks -- a colorful American Flag draped over an Adirorondack chair, set against a smoothly textured black backdrop, to the eerie real, such as a work by Loretta Feeney, whose painting in progress of New York City, including the Twin Towers, she found difficult to finish, but completed nonetheless because of its appropriateness to the exhibit.

©"The Red, White, and Blue"
by Susan O'Brien McLean
From the "Land of the Free" exhibition.

Breaking another Museum mold, all works on display from each of the 31 artists, at the “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” exhibit will be for sale. This fact alone, will make the show a truly exciting and paramount exhibit as it will give collectors a chance to own a museum piece that commemorates and honors such an important date in our nation’s history. The opening will be preceded (5 - 7 PM) by patriotic music from pianist Gloria Lariviere.

Under Nickerson’s direction the Cahoon Museum is being transformed into an important Museum of both historic and contemporary importance. “I want people to come back,” she says. “I want to show quality work, and for people to be amazed at what we’re doing. I want them to come back, and hopefully, the more ambitious the show, the more publicity we’ll get.”

Even though the Museum has 400 members and a list of dedicated sponsors, the $3 donation box at the entrance does help, as any publicity she can get to increase foot traffic is important, she says.

Nickerson sums up her hopes simply: “I’d like us to be known throughout New England as a quality small museum - a little jewel.”

This, she has achieved.

This, it truly is.

"A Dream of Peace"
by Elspeth Halvorsen, mixed-med con.

LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE

February 1 through March 9, 2002

Opening reception: 5 to 7 PM, Friday, February 1, 2002

An invitational exhibition/sale of works by Cape artist William Adelman, Susan Baker, Samir Barber, Betsy Bennett, Anne Boucher, Carmen Cicero, William R. Davis, Loretta Feeney, Betty Carroll Fuller, Jack Garver, Jack Goldsmith, Christopher Green, Lois Griffel, Elspeth Halvorsen, Thomas Higham, Marieluise Hutchinson, Marjorie Keary, Roger P. Levin, Jane Lincoln, Robert McDonald, Susan O'Brien McLean, Carol Odell, Suzanne Packer, Robert K. Roark, Rosebee, Jayne Shelley-Pierce, Charles Sovek, Christie Velesig, Tony Vevers, and Joyce Zavorskas.

Twenty-five percent of the proceeds from the sales of artworks will be donated to the September 11th Fund. This exhibition has been generously sponsored by C.H. Newton Builders, Inc. of Osterville and West Falmouth, MA.

Gallery talks by various artists at 11 AM every Friday (except February 1) during the show. Please call for a schedule

Museum hours: 10 AM to 4 PM, Tuesday - Saturday.

4676 Falmouth Road (Rte. 28), Cotuit, MA 02635

Telephone: (508) 428-7581; Web: www.cahoonmuseum.org

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