Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown with Elizabeth Smith

Elizabeth Smith, founding executive director of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, joins us this week to talk about painter Helen Frankenthaler and her connection to Provincetown. She explains the foundation’s origins, assets, and mission to promote understanding of visual arts. She recounts Frankenthaler’s New York upbringing, early art education (including Rufino Tamayo and Bennington College with Paul Feeley), brief 1950 Provincetown study with Hans Hofmann, and her sustained summers in Provincetown from 1960–1969 after marrying Robert Motherwell. They discuss her studio routine, locations (Days Lumber Yard, the Seed Barn, and a later “tree house” studio), evolving 1960s painting toward simplified geometry, and her soak-stain technique on raw canvas and later acrylics. She describes visitors, the 2018 PAAM “Abstract Climates” exhibition, how to view her paintings, upcoming exhibitions (including Basel and a 2028 National Gallery retrospective), her printmaking, the foundation’s research access, and its Climate Initiative Grants funding 401 U.S. arts organizations.