Lydia Vivante, a visitor engagement associate at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, is often the first person to greet a visitor to the museum. For Vivante, this is the most important part of her job.
“Meeting the people and being able to introduce them to PAAM is very special,” she says. “Sometimes, there are even people from the neighborhood who haven’t been here or haven’t ventured this far down into the East End.”
After meeting Vivante or one of the other staff who oversee the front desk, a visitor encounters a well-stocked and thoughtfully curated shop. The shop mainly sells art books, but also local pottery, postcards that represent the museum’s collection, eco-friendly art supplies for kids, and, of course, PAAM merch.
Vivante grew up in Wellfleet, the daughter of Nancy Adair Bradish and the Italian-American writer Auturo Vivante. After leaving the Cape, she returned to Wellfleet in 2007 and has been active in the local community since, serving on the Wellfleet Recycling Committee and the town’s historical commission. Vivante worked at the Fisher Landau Center for Art in New York and at the Julie Heller Gallery in Provincetown before starting to work behind the front desk at PAAM in 2019.
The Provincetown Independent asked Vivante to name her top five picks from the PAAM shop.
The Modern Art Cookbook by Mary Ann Caws, Reaktion Books, 2018
The cookbook section includes local classics like The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook by Howard Mitcham. But Vivante selects a newer title: The Modern Art Cookbook by Mary Ann Caws. In it, Caws examines the lives of artists through food — what they cook and how food may be related to their art practice.
“Helen Frankenthaler happens to have an appetizer in here,” says Vivante, noting connections between artists in the PAAM collection and the cookbook. “It’s a beef appetizer, and it sounds pretty good.”
Paul Bowen, Sculpture: 1974-2004, Jaffe-Friede & Strauss Galleries, Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College, 2005
There is a section of the PAAM that Vivante refers to as “treasures from the vault.” These are binders full of old catalogues from exhibitions and shows at other museums of work by local artists. Vivante’s favorite is a 2005 Paul Bowen catalogue.
“I’ve always liked his work,” she says. Bowen, a sculptor working with scavenged wood, lived in Provincetown before moving to Vermont. He shows regularly at Berta Walker Gallery.
“The design of the catalogue is nice. Some catalogues just have black and white illustrations because it used to be harder to do color, but this one is beautiful,” says Vivante.
B.J.O. Nordfeldt: American Internationalist by Gabriel P. Weisberg, University of Minnesota Press, 2021
Nordfeldt’s significance in Provincetown, says Vivante, is his important contribution to white-line woodblock printing. In addition to Provincetown, he lived and worked in Chicago, Paris, New York, Santa Fe, and New Jersey. He is well known for his paintings, but working in so many locations inspired him to try other techniques.
Nordfeldt is credited with inventing the technique of white-line prints in 1916. The technique, which uses white lines to divide shapes in full-color relief prints, is often referred to as “the Provincetown print” because it was so popular with artists here. Blanche Lazzell was a noted practitioner of the technique, and her work is currently on display in a survey show at the museum.
Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking by Jason Logan, Abrams, 2018
Vivante says she’s not an artist, “but I like to work with watercolor and gouache sometimes.” This guide to natural ink is one that should be of interest to Outer Cape creatives. In it, Logan, an artist and designer in Ontario, details the process of foraging materials for color and how these raw materials — things like rust, soot, black walnuts, and various botanicals — can be turned into beautiful colors with which to paint. Make Ink is consistent with the art materials sold in the shop, which include ecofriendly watercolors and finger paint made from fruit and vegetable pigments.
Bob Thompson: This House Is Mine by Diana K. Tuite, Yale University Press, 2021
“I am interested when contemporary artists take old images and rework them,” says Vivante. “Bob Thompson makes reference to the past, but he puts his own spin on the images.” Thompson had a very brief career that started in the early 1950s; he died in 1966. During that short but productive time, he spent an influential summer in Provincetown.
Vivante is intrigued by the influence of the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya on Thompson. In contrast to Goya’s dark palette, however, Thompson uses bright colors and flat graphic shapes. His work seems to lie somewhere between Red Grooms and Goya, Provincetown and Spain.
