Mervin Jules was an artist, collector, and president of Provincetown Art Association and Museum

Mervin Jules (1912-1994) was known for his silk screen prints. He contracted polio as a child which damaged his legs. When we met he had been president of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum for a year. He was close friends with Joyce scholar and gallerist, Dr. Nathaniel Halper. As an artist he pursued representational figuration with subjects often motivated by social justice. He was friends with abstract expressionists including Jackson Pollock who he knew when they studied with Thomas Hart Benton at Art Students League. He occasionally acquired work by winning at poker. With Halper they acquired works from the estate of Karl Knaths who was a long time friend. When there was a panel discussion at the Art Association he generously offered his home for a few of us to stay. 

Mervin Jules
July 24, 1984

Charles Giuliano What is your relationship with the Art Association?

Mervin Jules Currently I am president of the Art Association but have been a member since I first came here in 1945. That was a brief visit and I started coming regularly in 1948. In ’45 we came for our honeymoon. My wife had a roommate, Ione Walker, who came with her father long before as an organist/ composer. From time-to-time Rita was invited to visit Ione. Before that I wasn’t aware of the Cape as a summer place. There was a boat from Boston but friends drove us down. We stayed on the strip which didn’t have as many motels as it does now. 

In 1945 I was appointed to Smith College and this seemed like the nearest summer place. We stayed each summer depending on what we could afford. We rented but there was a time about 30 years ago when an influx of analysts from Boston and New York were buying up everything in sight. Places that we had rented were no longer available and rents went up. Our last rental was what is now Ann Packard’s house, which cost $1,600 for the season. For that kind of money we could buy our own place.

CG What did you pay (a house on Commercial Street with water view)?

MJ That was 29 years ago and we paid $12,600. It was the smartest move of my life.

It’s waterfront property but not winterized.

CG What do you do?

MJ I’m a printmaker. I’m a graduate of Maryland Art Institute and a native of Baltimore. After four years at MAI I spent a year at the Art Students League. Then I returned to Baltimore and had an exhibition there. Nothing sold and I announced to my father that I was moving to New York. My father said, and I remember it distinctly, why not stay here where you will be a big fish in a small pond? I replied that it was OK to be a big fish but that there wasn’t any pond.

CG That’s what the Cone Sisters said about Baltimore and why they gave their collection to the Baltimore Museum of Art.

MJ I saw the collection when it was in their home. They made it available to visitors. You just had to call, say you were sincerely interested, and they let you in. It was my first encounter with modern art.

CG Did you meet them?

MJ Oh yes, but I don’t have a clear memory as they were elderly. They were cousins of Gertrude Stein. The Cone family had the patent on blue denim. The Cone sisters were among the earliest physicians. They graduated from Johns Hopkins

(Claribel Cone and Etta Cone, collectively known as the Cone sisters, were active as American art collectors, world travelers, and socialites during the first part of the 20th century. Claribel trained as a physician and Etta as a pianist. Their social circle included Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein also studied medicine in Baltimore but immigrated to Paris. Later the Cone Sisters also moved to Paris where they collected with a focus on Matisse.)

Later I visited the Phillips Museum which is where I met Karl Knaths who taught there.

CG Recently I saw your work in a Boston University exhibition of socially concerned artists. Were you in the WPA?

MJ No. I had my first show in New York at the Hudson Walker Gallery in 1937 when I was 25. I made just enough to get by so I didn’t qualify for relief. When I lived in Baltimore I had many jobs. I was a union organizer and worked in a haberdashery store. Even when in school I worked. I didn’t make much but you didn’t need much.

I was president of the Artists’ Union in Baltimore. I joined the Artists’s Union in New York when I was there as a student. And, subsequently, a year later when I returned. I shared a studio with Axel Horn who was active in the Union. I was friend with Chet Moore who went to New York and helped me get into the Union. He became a painter and collector of African art. I was having shows in Detroit and would visit him there. We collaborated on a series of silk screens for children. It was a portfolio of eleven prints. We were friends with Victor Dimico who was head of the Education Department at MoMA. Because of our portfolio they decided to have a competition of works of art for children. We submitted and won awards which is how we got into the Artists’ Union.

CG Were you involved in anti war activities?

MJ I was a member of the League Against War and Facism. I was on their board. I was also involved with Artists’ Equity.

CG Did you maintain your political activities or become disillusioned and drop out?

MJ I can’t pinpoint the exact time.

CG Was it when Hitler and Stalin signed a non aggression pact?

MJ No, I accepted the rationale for that. I still believe it was a stall to give Stalin time to prepare. My disillusionment came after that.

CG Your painting in the BU show depicted a hand smashing the window of a bakery to steal a loaf of bread. Was that inspired by Victor Hugo?

MJ  I can’t define the genesis of ideas. At the time, most of my work was regarded as symbolic rather than being didactic and documentary. I did paintings of the dispossessed living on sidewalks. I did paintings of people sleeping in Union Square which were thought of as being symptomatic of the nature of society.

CG Do you make studies which were used for paintings?

MJ No, I did it all from memory. I did a set of illustrations for PM a tabloid that was started in New York. The writer who became the editor had an assignment to cover the unemployed. It was a tabloid with a liberal slant. I was asked to illustrate it. I spent a couple of nights at the Salvation Army on the Bowery.

It was a horrible experience. Prior to that, because of union activity, I had been in a coal mining region. It was bootleg mining as the mines were shut down. Axel and I lived among the miners. I rarely did actual sketches. I absorbed. Early on, I found that when I made sketches I accumulated a lot of material which I came to regard as superficial. I would just study and rely on a photographic memory. I’ve done portraits from memory. Just from seeing him in the gallery I did a portrait of Hudson Walker. A small part of that was thinking that I would become a medical artist. I was accepted into the program at Johns Hopkins. I stayed there for a while but found that it was a rigid, non creative approach. We were trained to observe something very accurately for a brief period of time. Then recapitulate that, be it an operation, or what have you. I attribute my observational ability to that experience. By that time a process of elimination had begun. If you remember what’s essential you are not confused by a lot of superficial detail which doesn’t contribute to what you are trying to express about the thing. 

The subject matter evolved. Change is a word that always expressed a very different kind of thing. I never felt it was very different. Instead of making paintings that were involved with individual expression I began to make paintings that were a response to man-to-man and man to society. The work took on a more humanist direction. I felt that was a development to a more meaningful approach.

CG What were you doing in the ‘40s and ‘50s?

MJ I was making pictures of people, children and families. It was more personal and involved more emotion than previously.

CG How did you respond to abstract expressionism?

MJ I knew many of the artists before they were known as abstract expressionists. Mark Rothko was a friend. We showed at ACA Gallery in the 1930s when Herman Baron and ACA Gallery was on 8th Street.

CG What did ACA stand for?

MJ American Contemporary Artists. This is before Rothko became involved with abstract art. He attempted to buy and destroy his early work but I had seen them. I knew others including Robert Motherwell when he was in the Hamptons.

Before we moved to Northampton we used to summer at a place called South Sea which was opposite to South Hampton. It was on the Sound and close to the Hamptons. I got to know and was very friendly with Jackson Pollock. I saw him there as well as in New York. James Brooks was another artist I knew back then.  

I’ve reported on Pollock in taped interviews many times. There have been so many books on Pollock that by now every square inch has been covered. Axel Horn was also in Benton’s class. We had a studio at 92 Fifth Avenue. Benton’s studio was on 17th Street. 92 was between 14th and 15th Streets. We hung around together even after we were no longer Benton’s students. He was interested in Hillbilly music and some of us played. Axel played guitar and I also played an instrument. Rita, Benton’s wife, generously fed us spaghetti. Pollock was around and I knew him from that period. Benton has a summer place on Martha’s Vineyard and Pollock stayed with them. That lasted for about seven or eight years. At the time he was painting Bentonesque pictures.  I owned a couple of them. When I got married and moved out of the studio I gave them to Axel. Later, when he married and moved out of the studio, he left them behind.                                            

Frankly I was more interested in the work of Siqueoros. 

(David Alfaro Siqueiros, born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros, 1896 – 1974, was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, he was one of the most famous of the “Mexican muralists.”)

Occasionally, he would work in our studio when he was doing easel paintings. We were good friends with him and he would stay with us when he was traveling from Mexico to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. It was a loft studio with a room above where Axel lived with his wife. There was also a room with no windows. It had been used by the photographer Saul Liebchen. When Siqueros was with us he had an idea to make something that could be shown during demonstrations. He made a model of it in that room.  It was painted with Duco and spray guns which was a technique he developed.  It was a half cylinder to be carried on sticks. As it passed you would view the sides so it served as a means of propaganda. He painted it in our loft but it never got out of that room. There was no way to get it out the door. Things back then did not have the monetary value that they do today.

CG Pollock worked with Siqueiros.

MJ That’s true but I never actually saw him working with Siqueiros.

CG Did you know Pollock in Provincetown?

MJ Yes, but it was very casual. He was here in the 1940s but I don’t know the exact date. 

CG Did you see the photo in the Long Point show which was a group photo from Forum ’49?

MJ Nobody seemed to recognize the woman in the middle who I identified as Ruth Cobb the wife of Lawrence Kupferman.

CG The wall behind them shows works by Karl Knaths, Fritz Bultman, Jackson Pollock, Weldon Kees and Judith Rothschild.

MJ Perhaps Ellen (O’Donnell director of PAAM) has mentioned it but next year we are having a show based on Forum ’49.

CG Were you here then?

MJ Yes, it was a very exciting time. I was not involved with the abstract movement but had friends who were. In 1945 Knaths gave up his job at Bennington to turn full time to painting. He recommended me for the position. We had been friends since DC. I interviewed for the Bennington job. They offered me a job about the same time that I got an offer from Smith College. I was drawn to Bennington after a great interview but chose Smith.

CG Can we discuss Forum ’49?

MJ It was an exhibition and program organized by artists with a progressive, avant-garde orientation. They showed artists who were here at the time. I was friendly with Kupferman and went to a couple of the lectures. They had a jazz evening but I didn’t attend that.

CG Weldon Kees organized the jazz evening. Did you know him?

MJ No.

CG You knew Knaths. What can you say about him?

MJ I met him in Washington.

CG In the 1940s?

MJ No earlier than that. I went to NY in 1937 so it was earlier than then. When we started to come here I knew him well. I was often at the Phillips Museum but I didn’t know Duncan Phillips. There was an exhibition area with bedrooms incorporated into that. Frequently there were paintings on the floor. I was there looking at a Braque as well as Matisse’s “Black Mirror.” A tall, thin, red haired gentleman came in and sat beside me and asked me what I thought of the pictures. He said “I’m considering swapping one of my Daumiers for one of these pictures.” It was the greatest concentration of Daumiers on the East Coast. By then I knew who he was, but became very indignant that he would give one away.

He had a very strange attitude and budgeted what he could afford to spend in a year. I later learned this from Hudson Walker. When he continued to spend past the limit he continued buying with the idea that it would come out of the next year’s budget. Occasionally he swapped. After that first exchange I would see him there from time-to- time. About that time a conservator at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore questioned the authenticity of his Daumier “The Revolt.” I knew the conservator and he queried me as to my knowing that picture. I absolutely assured him that it was authentic. I had studied all the Daumiers I could and had a gut feeling, not a scholarly one, that the painting was authentic.

CG Did Phillips acquire your work?

MJ Yes, he has a number of them. I know two or three for sure. I was in a group show in Baltimore and he bought a picture of a box in a burlesque house. That was my first painting to be acquired by a museum. Subsequently, he bought some others. The only time they were shown was during the war. For some reason Phillips decided not to show Europeans so a lot of Americans went up. He bought a lot of Knaths about one a year.

The first Knaths he bought was “Geranium in a Night Window.” I owned a print of it which I sold to the National Collection (Smithsonian) before the Provincetown Printmakers exhibition. Nat Halper and I bought from the Knaths estate as did Jim and Jean Young.

CG The Youngs bought from Ed Shein who bought the bulk of the estate.

MJ I went to see the paintings. I saw several prints plus blocks and photographed them. I showed them to (Nat) Halper and said we have to show these artists, they’re early and have been forgotten.

CG Was it your idea for the Provincetown Printmakers Show?

MJ It was a joint thing because I worked very closely with Nat (Halper). Once we had done some digging we asked Janet Flint to do the catalogue. She was familiar with some of the artists because she had acquired their work for the collection. In 1982 we visited Washington to discuss progress with her. She suggested that if we were willing to postpone for a year the Smithsonian would jointly sponsor the exhibition and produce the catalogue. The Art Association never had enough money for catalogues particularly ones in color which was essential for this show. I knew her previously from the sale of a Karl Knaths.

CG What did it sell for?

MJ I think $800.

CG Did you own any work by Blanche Lazzell? I had three Lazzells one of which was a monotype which Halper showed in 1955. Another was a woodcut of her studio and the the print showed that she had mastered the (white line) technique. The third work was a landscape oil painting influenced by Ambrose Webster. It was done in the late period when she had simplified forms. I loaned the print to the show.

CG What show was that?

MJ At Mary Ryan Gallery in New York of Provincetown prints. It ended yesterday and I can show you the review. I located a lot of examples for her show. Getting back to the Provincetown Printmakers show (Smithsonian and PAAM) by then we had gathered some 200 examples. When we came to the decision to work with them we sent everything we had including the 200 prints. She was to curate the final selection. The show had about 76 prints which she selected from 200. We found a selection owned by a woman named Smith who was the daughter of one of the artists. Her mother had acquired 50 prints by her colleagues.

CG Who was her mother?

MJ I’ve forgotten, sorry but I’m terrible with names. She lives in the West End and is friends with Angie Myrer. (That may well be Ferol Sibley Warthern who did White Line prints.)

CG A result of that show is increased value and a market for the prints. (On line we saw prices from $11,000 to $85,000 for Lazzell prints.) In Ross Moffett’s history Art in Narrow Streets there is a brief mention of the mostly women printmakers.

MJ This history is yet to be explored. A number of them were women returning from Paris because of the war. Gertrude Stein mentioned Ethel Mars and Maude Hunt Squire. I have the original list of artists which I drew up when we were working on the project. Nat knew Blanche Lazzell he had that kind of mind. We were good friends for a long time. His wife Marge was a classmate of mine at the Art Students League. When we moved here I joined Beachcombers and met Nat. We were interested in art and chess.

CG Did you share his interest in James Joyce?

MJ No. Once a week we played poker. We both wanted to own a Knaths painting. I only had a print. We tried to find out who had the estate. I’ve always liked his work. Hudson Walker put on a small exhibition.

He was a New York dealer who gave me my first show in 1937. He came here early on because his wife’s parents coming here when she was quite young. When he married Ione she encouraged him to come here. From 1937 to 1940 he had a gallery on 57Th Street. He studied art at Harvard and ran a small gallery in Cambridge. It didn’t last long then he came to NY and married.

They honeymooned in Europe where he acquired art to start a collection and gallery. He came to New York in 1937 and established the Walker Gallery. He had the first decent show of Kathe Kollwitz based on work that he acquired in Europe. Alfred Stieglitz used to represent Marsden Hartley. There was a fight between Georgia O’Keeffe (wife of Stieglitz) and Hartley. So Hartley was looking for a gallery and Walker picked him up. When Hudson was here he owned some Knaths so we went to see them. Knaths was friendly so we went there as well. Hudson arranged to have Rosenberg represent Knaths.

Hudson was one of the movers. When he closed the gallery he took it upon himself to place all of his artists. That’s something that to my knowledge no other dealer has done. He arranged for Knaths and Marsden Hartley (I877-1943) to go to Rosenberg. He died not long after but from 1940 on he was with Rosenberg. I bought my first Hartley from him in 1937.

CG Do you still have it?

MJ Yes, I have six Hartleys. I paid good money for them. The first one I bought was a crab with a sea shell. He did a series of seven all the same size.

CG Did you know him here?

MJ No but I knew him in NY when he was represented by Hudson. The second one I bought from Rosenberg. I bought one at the Forestall estate auction. He was the Secretary of the Navy. I won two Hartley drawings in a poker game. Nat (Halper) used to handle Hartley things that Hudson owned. He had some drawings and a gouache of a crab. When we played poker I turned my winnings over to Nat. At the end of the year I looked through his inventory and bought things with my winnings. I bought a lot of things from Nat over the years.

CG So Nat was a lousy poker player.

MJ No, he was pretty good but not the other guys. I was playing for money not for paintings. But when you have cash winnings they disappear. Nat and I have been friends for years and we had this arrangement. We both wanted a Knaths and heard that the bank had the estate. We made an appointment to see what they had which turned out to be about a dozen monotypes. I was into them and had acquired a number of monotypes. I had never seen his monotypes (1919-1920). I acquired a number of monotypes and some drawings. They were not the one that you see with an estate stamp. They were ink drawings signed by Karl Knaths. The monotypes are signed Otto Knaths.

CG I saw them at Nat’s.

MJ Those are ours.

CG He said that some of them were on consignment in New York. For when they were done they were as abstract as anything being created by the Stieglitz group at that time.

MJ No question about it. When he went with Rosenberg the gallery was attempting to build his reputation. When he died Helen was unhappy with what they were doing and pulled the work out of the gallery.

(This is not accurate. It is unlikely that the widow was involved with estate decisions. It was the bank representative, Ken Demaris, who asked that the work be returned. Rosenberg continued to show Knaths with catalogues but generated few sales. By then it is likely that the best works had been sold.)

Helen’s sister, Agnes Weinrich was an artist. The Youngs (Jim and Jean) have a lot. I don’t know how many but they have a large painting of two figures and a piano. It hung in the dining room. You can see ideas that he borrowed.

CG He respected her work.

MJ Nat and I visited the bank. There were a number of paintings that I didn’t care for as well as two or three gouaches, very early paintings. There was a price list with evaluations from 1971 when he died. By now it was already 1980. I was absolutely excited about the monotypes. So I said to Nat let’s make an offer for all of them, some drawings, a watercolor, and the Self Portrait. They accepted our offer.

CG The monotypes are not on the estate list which just has paintings.

MJ There are two estate lists; one for his and another for Helen’s. A lot of work was sold from his estate and her list was much smaller. There were not more than 35 items left.

CG Can we get back to how Knaths was taken on by Rosenberg?

MJ Because of the war the gallery decided to take on American artists. So they represented Milton Avery, Marsden Hartley and  Karl Knaths. That’s all they wanted. They had no interest in them other than that they were American artists.

CG They dumped Avery but kept Knaths.

MJ They couldn’t deal with Avery. Very little happened with Avery (sales) until near the end of his life.

CG They represented Knaths from 1949 through his death in 1971 as well as the estate for some time. During his lifetime Paul Rosenberg was careful in handling Knaths. When the estate was taken back the bank sold a lot of it to Ed Shein. The result was a market flooded with a lot of uneven work. That damaged the artist’s posthumous reputation.

(Shein states “I signed paperwork with First National Bank to sell each painting for $2400 of which I got $600. The Youngs (Jim and Jean) bought 40. There were 125 total that I picked up at Rosenberg’s.”)

MJ In a similar way Rosenberg handled Hartley very well. He built up their prices and got their work into important museums. They got recognition. Knaths, for example, won a prize in the Carnegie International. That helped to establish their value.

CG Jean Young studied with Knaths at the same time as Judith Rothschild.

MJ We made the offer and left a deposit. Nat didn’t have a check to cover his half. But, because he was known, and had an account with them, they let us take the work back to his house. I told Nat that I had no place for them here. We went through them and I took two monotypes and the watercolor. He took two monotypes and two drawings. We formed a partnership and decided that we would only sell to galleries or collectors. We weren’t planning on exhibitions. We got in touch with Barbara Fiedler who had a gallery opposite to the Phillips Museum. We decided to only consign to her work related to the museum’s collection. That entailed drawings and studies but not the Self Portrait which didn’t relate to anything. We sold quite a bit.

CG Between the two of you how many monotypes were there?

MJ I think there were eleven but I’m not certain.

CG What’s your opinion of them?

MJ I love them. The one that Nat got is the best I’ve ever seen. We took turns selecting.

CG Is it the one with a mountain and a rider in front?

MJ Yes. It’s one of the greatest. The others I didn’t particularly care for. I now only have one. The other I sold to Felice Dewitt. It had an image on each side. We priced the monotypes at $800. The Youngs have a number of them. Most of what they have is a number of small sketches with the estate stamp. I don’t know what happened to the few which we didn’t buy.

We made a lump sum offer to the bank. We then tried to prorate it in terms of the cost to us. The Self Portrait we acquired for $2,500.

CG That’s consistent with the $2,400 which Shein was asking for paintings.

MJ Yes, but that was later. This was in 1980.

CG I asked Shein about the Self Portrait and he thought it was a terrible painting. What about it attracted you?

MJ As a theme I’m fascinated by self portraits. I paint a lot of self portraits. Last year I curated an exhibition for the Century Association. I’m a member as is Nat. I’m now chair of the exhibition committee and we have 16 shows a year. There are eight large shows and eight small one. I organized a show of self portraits by Centurians who were also members of the National Academy. To become a member of the National Academy you have to give them a self portrait that must pass a committee for acceptance. They have a self portrait of practically every member. If you don’t do self portraits a member would paint a portrait of you. In the space we can show 35 or so works. We selected 15 past members and twenty living members. When the show was hung I spent a lot of time looking at them. Self portraits are very revealing as they have been through the history of art.

(The Century Association is a private social, arts, and dining club in New York City, founded in 1847. Its clubhouse is located at 7 West 43rd Street near Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.)

CG What were your feeling about the Knaths painting?

MJ It embodied his theory of color. He had an elaborate theory written on the firebricks of his studio. The color orchestration in the painting embodied all of that. I related to a double self portrait lithograph which I already owned. It was commissioned by the Association of American Artists (AAA). They own the edition of which very few sold.

CG The painting shows his clam shells (with premixed paint) and it has a wild expression which was untypical of his work.

MJ Normally he took the work further but this is thinly painted with washes of color. You can still see the preliminary grid. It was a gift to his wife in 1968. I’m trying to recall how I learned that. It was not in his estate as he had already given it to her.

CG Did you know Helen?

MJ Very superficially. Hudson and I visited Knaths once a year usually in August. We would look at new work and talk about it. If he thought we had forgotten he would call us.

CG A great show for the Art Association would include Knaths, Weinrich, Moffett, Lazzell and Dickinson, the early work until 1940.

MJ A show that I have in the back of my mind would be about all of the schools. It would begin with Charles Hawrthorne, Ambrose Webster and Elmer Browne. Davidson had a school here as well as Hans Hofmann, William L’Engle, Leo Manso and Victor Kendell. The schools are essential to what made Provincetown an artist’s colony. They attracted students many of whom became professionals. The Art Association has started a school and that tradition should be maintained. It creates an awareness for making Provincetown the arts center which it is.

I found a watercolorist from Truro who taught at Columbia in its Department of Education. He convinced the university to offer academic credit for a course he taught which mostly attracted teachers. Sabina Teichen was in that class which ran for 12 to 13 years. Lisa Farnsworth had a school in Wellfleet as did Xavier Gonzalez. I want to have a show of all of those Lower Cape schools.

CG And, of course, Henry Hensche. Do you know him?

MJ Yes, but we don’t have polemical discussions. As long as I’m president of the Art Association I don’t show my work because I don’t want to be accused of using my influence. I became president a year ago.

CG Who was president before you?

MJ Ciro Cossi and before that Larry Richmond. I have been a member of the Art Association for a long time but not on its board.

CG What’s different about the Art Association?

MJ When I came on board I realized that there was a schism between abstraction and representation. That resulted in two juries. I tried to get rid of that and have one jury. There are all kinds of rumors including that Hofmann wanted to donate a number of his paintings and that it was rejected. It’s not an established fact but I have heard this from multiple sources. There is no documentation.

CG Ellen (O’Donnell Rankin then director) told me that only recently they acquired their first Hofmann. What a tragedy.

MJ It’s a tragedy if you consider that they could have gotten anything.  Not just from Hofmann but many other artists if we had involved them. To address that, we started the young artists exhibitions within the past five or six years. That’s very positive. We have one or two young artists on the nominating committee. Since I’ve become director we have appointed five native Provincetown individuals to the board including (collector and A House owner) Reggie Cabral and John Snow, Sumner Robinson. These are people who have been interested and supportive but not involved.

CG Is there a future for the arts in Provincetown?

MJ My boss at Smith College called me a person who was nostalgic for the future. I have never for a moment entertained the notion that it will not be. There are ups and downs with problems that are difficult to solve. But it’s too important to let it die. I refuse to recognize that possibility. We have a wonderful person in Ellen O’Donnell and there are all kinds of little things that add up; lot of different elements that we can start to connect.

Until recently we didn’t have a heating system. The Art Association was dead in the winter. A board member paid for that. Now in the winter we have a resident theatre group. We have exhibitions and 200 people showing up for openings. We have aerobic dancing, sketching classes, French lessons, and other activities.

CG Ellen said that people come from all over the Cape for winter theatre performances. You have to acknowledge that there were years of decline.

MJ There were economic reasons for that. Housing got priced out for artists and young people. When young artists came to study with Hofmann there were affordable places to stay.

CG What is the role of Provincetown as a place for gay people.

MJ During WWI when artists came here returning from Europe a number of them were lesbians. They came because they were welcomed by the Portuguese fishing community. They were staunchly catholic and comprised the year round and winter residents. They were conservative but accepted radicals like Jack Reed and Louise Bryant or Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown Players. There was no attempt to reject them. They contributed to the economy and that seemingly was recognized. The attitude was live and let live and this was understood by the artists.

CG Has rising real estate cost and increase of the gay community changed Provincetown as a locus for artists?

MJ In the 1960s and 1970s there were as many was 23 galleries. They were supported by housing that attracted potential collectors. They bought property and settled here. That gradually disappeared which is when Nat’s HCE Gallery closed.

CG Do you have trouble getting around on crutches?

MJ Nat had a car which he kept here. Wherever he wanted to go we would drive. We went to Philadelphia and Washington. I drive everywhere I go, not in that little electric thing.

CG Is it a golf car?

MJ No it’s a real car. I thought this was the ideal place to have an electric car. It’s small so I can park and go anywhere. It’s non polluting, inexpensive. A friend called and thought I might be interested. It was a demonstration model which I got cheap and have had it for the past six years. It has a charger and all you have to do it plug it in. A charge lasts for about 35 miles. I can get as far as Wellfleet but it’s perfect for around town.