It was Christmas night in Provincetown, 1990. The crowd was “gay and cheery” and Peter Donnelly, a 30-year-old musician from Watertown, had been invited to sing. All he had on […]
Arts & Minds
Celebrating the creative and sometimes quirky culture of the Outer Cape.
Browse all Arts & Minds stories below or dive into a topic:
THE INTERVIEW
Exhibit Designer David Perry Is Both Creator and Guide
The influencer just below the surface
David Perry flies under the radar. He’s an architect, designer, collector, and curator whose aesthetic decisions have made aquariums and zoos beautiful and more accessible. He now works backstage advising […]
BATTLEGROUND
Britney Spears’s Search for Decency
The pop singer’s memoir is a graceful retelling of traumatic truths
People have always felt free to say whatever they want about Britney Spears’s personal life. This was true at the beginning of her career when she was in her teens […]
Arts Briefs
Arts Briefs for November 9, 2023 through November 16, 2023
‘Best of Summer’ at Schoolhouse Gallery For the “Best of Summer 2023” group show currently on view at Schoolhouse Gallery (494 Commercial St., Provincetown), gallery director and curator Michael Carroll […]
DECADES
Jo Sandman Brings the Body to Bear
A master craftswoman’s experiments in abstraction find a home at PAAM
Jo Sandman wanted a more progressive art education than Boston could offer her. Born in Newton in 1931, she had studied art since she was a young girl, but it […]
INDIE SCREEN
The Last Temptation of Martin Scorsese
His Killers of the Flower Moon is a modern classic
Throughout his illustrious career, filmmaker Martin Scorsese has been obsessed with the powerful pull of family, culture, and faith. Their power can be frustrating and repressive — leading to explosions […]
POETRY
Two Poems and an Invitation
Strange creatures and other miracles of summer
Summers By Robert Kuttner I’ve often wondered How the summer of ’39 felt People savoring ordinary joys The dread of doom just over the hill Or the summer of 1914 […]
BOOKS
‘Our Strangers’ Offers Big Provocations in Bite-Size Stories
Lydia Davis finds wit in the senselessness of 21st-century life
In the story “Caramel Drizzle,” Lydia Davis begins with a simple but disorienting question, rendered in quotation marks and without attribution: “Caramel syrup or caramel drizzle?” How are those choices, […]
THE INTERVIEW
Resurrecting Susan Dimock, a Shipwrecked Heroine
Susan Wilson’s story of a nearly forgotten pioneering woman surgeon
Susan Dimock was a celebrated surgeon in the 19th century who died in a shipwreck in 1875 at age 28. In her short life she’d become a light of her […]
IN THE WOODS
Poets From Mexico Build New Worlds in Wellfleet
A Modern House Trust residency on development and design
WELLFLEET — When five Mexican and Mexican-American poets, artists, and architects arrived at the modernist houses that dot the seashores and backwoods here in early October, they had “the best […]
Arts Briefs
Arts Briefs for November 2, 2023 through November 9, 2023
Printmaking Without Limits A wide range of printmaking techniques — from monotypes and silkscreens to woodcut and solar plate prints — are on view in the current exhibition at the […]
THE INTERVIEW
The Provincetown Writer Who’s Watching You
Heidi Jon Schmidt draws universal truths from life in one small town
You may be checking out at the grocery store, strolling with a friend, or waiting in line for the ATM. You’re talking to the people around you or just staring […]
RADIO
Spooky Audio Tales Pick Up Good Vibrations
J Hagenbuckle’s Cape Noir Radio Theater uses only sound to tell stories of horror and crime
If you remove what you see in live theater or in movies — actors’ expressions and movement, scenery, costumes — what’s left is simply sound. J Hagenbuckle, whose medium is […]
THEATER REVIEW
Tom Hewitt Relives a Romantic Nightmare in ‘Another Medea’
Aaron Mark’s play gives gay parenthood a grisly Greek twist
At Halloween, we let evil spirits run free and amuse ourselves with their wickedness. It’s a way of reminding us of their power and horror and, with a wink, containing […]
SHARP TONGUE
At Bianca Del Rio’s Show, No One Is Safe
Vicious, filthy, jaw-droppingly rude, she’s ‘Don Rickles in a dress’
Bianca Del Rio, the sharp-tongued stand-up comic who won season six of RuPaul’s Drag Race, is returning to Provincetown just in time to scare up some laughs for Spooky Bear […]
