Image: Courtesy of Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art
Provincetown’s History Told Through Artifacts
by Steve Desroches
Founded in 1978, the Provincetown Business Guild (PBG) is one of the first LGBTQ business associations in the country, with the express purpose to market Provincetown to the LGBTQ community. In its first year the PBG created Provincetown Carnival, a celebration to bring people to town in what used to be the sleepiest time of summer. Carnival is now the busiest time of the year in Provincetown hands down, attracting tens of thousands of revelers, with parade day being the most crowded singular day on Provincetown’s calendar.
Over the years various traditions and customs around Carnival have come and gone, but one that’s remained is an annual poster advertising the August celebration, now highly collectible artifacts of this paramount Provincetown event. In the early days the posters were simple in design and largely utilitarian, listing the events throughout the week. But Provincetown being the artistic community that it is, the posters soon became more elaborate and works of art.
Some of the most memorable, and sought after by collectors, are the metallic editions created by artist F. Ronald Fowler in the 1980s. Fowler was an in-demand illustrator creating images for the gay male magazines Honcho and Mandate as well as the more demure Reader’s Digest. Upon moving to Provincetown in 1984 Fowler got to work right away creating posters for not only Carnival, but also the Provincetown Theater Company and what was then the Provincetown AIDS Support Group. In 1992 he drew the majority of images for The New Joy of Gay Sex, written by Dr. Charles Silverstein and Felice Picano, with the original illustrations selling briskly as works of art. Come 1997, he opened the Fowler Gallery in the East End, which he owned and operated until 2005.
Sadly, Fowler died in 2014, but his memory lives on in part as his shiny and sexy Carnival posters are frequently found at auction, sometimes selling for as much as $300, while various museums collect them, such as these found at New York City’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art.
