Provincetown Art Association and Museum  The Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) is located at 460 Commercial Street in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and is the most attended art museum on Cape Cod. The museum's permanent collection includes over 2,500 objects, a number which continues to grow through donations and new acquisitions. PAAM mounts approximately forty exhibitions each year. Prominent artists Charles Hawthorne, Oscar Gieberich, William Halsall, Gerrit Beneker, E. Ambrose Webster and several local business men and women established the Provincetown Art Association in 1914. The organizing artists donated works and mounted two juried exhibitions in the summer of 1915, beginning a tradition of collecting and exhibiting the work of local artists. By this time, Provincetown had become a refuge of artists and expatriates returned from war-torn Europe. The town was firmly established as "The Biggest Art Colony in the World" (Boston Globe, 8/8/16). PAAM strengthened its role as the anchor of this art colony through the purchase of its present building in 1919. John "Wichita Bill" Noble served as the Association's first director. His son, John A. Noble, also became a prominent artist. PAAM's artist founders had come out of the Impressionist tradition and thus did not readily accept the new Modernist movement. Faced with aesthetic differences among its artist membership, however, the organization worked to maintain a balance in the work it exhibited. True to its mission, PAAM mounted separate "Modern" and "Regular" summer exhibitions between 1927 and 1937. Partial conciliation was reached in 1937 when concurrent exhibitions were hung in the same gallery on opposite walls. The Depression years of the '30s and the war years of the early '40s were difficult times for the town and the Association. Although annual shows were canceled, volunteers managed to maintain a reduced schedule. By 1947, the regular schedule of two summer exhibitions had been reestablished. The rise of Abstract Expressionism—intensified by the location of Hans Hofmann's summer school here—again riffled the deep divisions within the arts community during the '50s. When PAAM celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1964 with a retrospective show of its major artists, the organization focused on gaining national attention for Provincetown's considerable contribution to American art. The effect was a boon for the organization. Activities increased, new galleries were added, the exhibition schedule expanded, a storage vault was built to house the expanding collection, and once again PAAM showed itself as the center of the local art world.