^{Images courtesy of the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA}

Provincetown’s History Told Through Artifacts

by Steve Desroches 

It’s truly astonishing how often Provincetown appears in the biographies of notable people, for all kinds of reasons, around the world. So many artists, actors, drag queens, playwrights, poets, comedians, musicians, activists, politicians, scientists, and others visit or live in Provincetown that they can go forgotten in current times. But history remembers, and the reminders pop up unexpectedly all the time. 

Years ago, as YouTube grew to be the giant video collection it is, a newsreel appeared titled Cape Cod Hippies Conduct a Paint-In, Provincetown, 1967. It was the Summer of Love, and not just in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, but anywhere there was a large counter-culture presence, like in Provincetown. The video shows young hippies in Provincetown at an event where a woman is painting on their scantily-clad bodies, with some being completely naked, shocking more conservative visitors to town. But what the narrator does not mention is that the woman in question was artist Yayoi Kusama, who would go on to a huge career working in a variety of mediums, genres, and styles, but for whom polka dots were never far away. 

Kusama came to town at the invitation of the Chrysler Museum of Art, founded and operated by art collector and Chrysler Corporation heir Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. in what is now the Provincetown Public Library. The museum operated there from 1958 to 1971 at which time he donated the collection to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences in Norfolk, Virginia, which then changed its name to the Chrysler Museum of Art. He was a bold, larger-than-life character, and in his Provincetown years was known to bring big exhibitions and events to the museum, including Kusama’s idea for a Body Festival, the event captured on the newsreel. Throughout her long career, the human body and nudity were common themes. She once said, “When asked why I do what I do? Misery and pain and death are cheap. Everywhere there is war. We have forgotten the beauty of our bodies. Why are we so ashamed and contrite? We work hard for our pleasure, the naked body is all we own.” 

The Body Festival in Provincetown garnered an enormous amount of attention worldwide, and these archival materials held in the collection of the Chrysler Museum of Art help preserve the memory of that event, which received renewed attention when Kusama died this past August in Tokyo at the age of 97.