Last year, the Cape Cod Museum of Art (CCMA) celebrated its 30th anniversary with no shortage of fanfare. The small museum has a historic connection with the storied art colonies of the New England coast, and is something to be proud of. Now, however, the consensus this week is that the museum in Dennis, Massachusetts is in a tight spot, and is being forced to make some painful decisions in order to remain financially sustainable. “When [former executive director Elizabeth Ives Hunter] retired, we took a good hard look at our finances and found we are not bringing in the funding that we need to fill our obligations,” current CCMA board president Hrant Russian told the Barnstable, Massachusetts-based Register. “People are hesitant to part with money in this economy,” he added, citing plunging donations in recent years as a significant cause for worry.
The description offered by Russian contrasts unnervingly from the reputation Cape Cod has held since the 1960s as an exceedingly supportive home for the arts. Many art lovers know nearby Provincetown for the Fine Arts Work Center, a non-profit co-founded by painters Robert Motherwell and Jack Tworkov, which continues to offer fellowships to writers and visual artists in addition to readings and public exhibitions year round. Cape Cod is also where Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Rivers, and Robert de Niro, Sr. studied under the Abstract Expressionist giant Hans Hoffman, whose famous work hangs in the Dennis museum alongside the likes of Robert Henry and Edwin Dickinson.
Per capita, it's hard to think of a place that has been more generous to writers and artists than this tiny corner of the country, but the past few months have not been kind to the CCMA. Over the summer, the museum reduced its opening hours to Wednesdays through Saturdays, and laid off six members of its paid staff, leaving curator Michael Giaquinto and business manager Lilly O'Brien as the their only full-time employees. Local management consultant Ernie Oliviera, a former member of the Friends of the CMMA, has expressed particiular disquiet over the leadership of Russian and his administration. “They aren’t paying bills, they’re not planning classes and they have nobody doing public relations or advertising,” he told the Register. “They have no activities going on to bring in revenue.”