by Steve Desroches
The Pilgrim Monument juts high into the sky above Provincetown, visible for miles out to sea. Since its completion in 1910, it’s become the symbol of Provincetown, a beloved oddity in that it was built to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims and the signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620, but found its inspiration from the Torre del Mangia in Siena, Italy. Over time it’s come to mean a whole lot more, absorbing history with it and becoming a beacon of Provincetown welcoming you the Cape tip’s shores, or even better, home. But on the campus of the Pilgrim Monument, the Provincetown Museum and its collections help tell the dizzying tale that is the enormous story of this tiny town. And its archives continue to grow.
It is a colossal task, collecting and preserving Provincetown’s history, says Sam Tager, curator of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. “I literally think that the purview of the museum is from the geologic formation of Provincetown to present day, including contemporary art and theater,” says Tager. Glancing around the archival space that is also his office that is clear. There are shelves of books on various aspects of Provincetown throughout the years, a framed photo of Ella Fitzgerald, a reminder of when she performed at the Atlantic House in 1955, and a giant print of Arctic explorer and native son Donald MacMillan, which also explains why there is a polar bear in a museum of Provincetown. But also nearby is the museum’s newest acquisition, stacks and stacks of Polaroid pictures largely taken by the late Pauline Fisher, owner of MAP, a retail store in Provincetown from 1994 to 2025 that was also a cultural pulse point in town. Working with other friends and family of Fisher, a friend contacted Tager to offer the photographs, which he gleefully accepted.
“It was a no brainer,” says Tager. “I’m trying to collect anything that document life in Provincetown. These photographs are absolute treasures.”
Fisher, who died in March 2025, was more than just a proprietor of a retail shop in Provincetown. She was a harbinger of cool and a friendly ringmaster of a hip scene, making MAP a Provincetown institution. Over the 30 years she lived in Provincetown she took Polaroids of friends and fans with her Polaroid camera. “There’s drag queens, drag brunches, there’s the shop in the 1990s and early 2000s,” says Tager. “And of course there’s dogs.” It’s a remarkable archive made all the more important and historically valuable by corresponding documents that name many of the people in the photos as well as some of the dogs. It’s an exciting collection that represents a specific time in Provincetown and the cultural life captured in each shot.
Since Courtney Hurst became the executive director of the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum in May 2024, with Tager becoming a permanent curator shortly thereafter, the institution on High Pole Hill has continued to make substantive changes, including in regards to it collections, perhaps most importantly by being open to new acquisitions after a lengthy moratorium. In that time the museum has acquired works by artists Irèn Handschuh, Jonathan Morrill, and Peter Hutchinson, a folio of handwritten letters and poems by Harry Kemp, homemade tools to repair fishing nets, the collection of the former VFW on Jerome Smith Road, artifacts from the Napi Van Derek collection, and of course, becoming home to the massive Provincetown memorabilia collection assembled by Sal Vasques. Fisher’s Polaroids join this growing collection both to help interpret that moment in Provincetown history as well as keep her legacy alive in a town that she loved and that loved her back. Tager says there really is no other institution in the world that can tell and preserve stories like those represented in Fisher’s Polaroids. He notes that the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Provincetown Public Library, and the town’s historical collection all do a great job, but have a different mission as to what they collect. Collectively, these institutions present a historical campus in town. And for the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum, the next project is to tackle the massive collection they have and make it more accessible to the public.
“We have a really large collection of materials,” says Tager. “We need to transfer the current database to a searchable collection online. It’s a giant project. The most important thing to me is to that all of the collections are digitized and searchable. That’s what we’ll be doing this winter.”
As for Fisher’s Polaroids, those too will be digitized so the public can enjoy them, as they will. While indeed digitizing the current collection is a priority, so too is collecting actual artifacts. A digital image is helpful, but it’s always vital to preserve and protect actual physical objects. While no materials should ever be sent or dropped off without prior approval, Tager is very interested in hearing from anyone with objects or archival materials relating to Provincetown and its history. He notes that one object can tell a myriad of stories. Two shell-covered obelisks created in the 1850s were removed from curio cabinets to “rest,” recently. While they represent decorative craft at the time, they also show how tiny Provincetown was globally connected, as the shells were not locally collected, but brought home on whaling ships from faraway. It’s why collecting is so important for memory, learning, and so much more.
“It’s just really important to us to get this stuff into stasis so it can be documented and preserved so future generations can discover it,” says Tager. “Collecting is always a priority.”
For more information on the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum call 508.487.1310 or visit pilgrim-monument.org.
