Due to popular demand we were able to open a select number of seats for this lecture!

Saturday, August 22, 2026
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Downtown Campus Auditorium
27 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA 01930
Registration Required

This lecture will be recorded & livestreamed.

CAM Members $5, Non-Members (Adult) $30.
Additional prices available when registering.
Tickets do not include admission to the special exhibition.

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The Atlantic coast has been a powerful magnet for artists across the twentieth century, offering a refuge from sweltering summers as well as the ties of friendship and community. Summers by the Sea: Helen Frankenthaler and Toni LaSelle examines the paintings of two mid-century artists who first came to Massachusetts as students of Hans Hofmann, and who shared affinities with the work of Milton Avery, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko as well. In subsequent years, LaSelle and Frankenthaler followed independent paths, but continued to find renewal in the siren call of the sea.

Alison de Lima Greene is the Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she has served on the curatorial staff since 1984. A member of the curatorial team responsible for the inaugural presentations in the MFAH’s new Nancy and Rich Kinder Building in 2020, her exhibitions include retrospectives devoted to Mark Rothko, Philip Guston, and Tamara de Lempicka, as well as special installations planned in collaboration with Yayoi Kusama, Pipilotti Rist, and Anicka Yi.

Image Credit: Toni LaSelle (1901–2002), Puritan, 1947–50, oil on canvas, 30 1/8 x 25 in. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum purchase funded by the Frank Freed Memorial Painting Fund, 95.45 © Estate of Dorothy Antoinette (Toni) LaSelle. Photograph © The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Thomas R. DuBrock.