THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

The Permanent Collection began with the AAN founders, who saw the need for documenting Nantucket’s art colony history. They also imagined the Collection providing a visual context for the association’s history while offering a precious heritage for the future. Many early donations were accrued through purchase awards at AAN functions. Today the works number over 1,500 and are carefully catalogued, watched over by committee, and actively guided into an ever-expanding entity. AAN continues to seek donations of important Nantucket artworks as well as seed funds to keep this legacy both preserved and exhibited on a regular basis. To inquire about donations, please contact AAN’s Artistic Director Robert Frazier.

Permanent Collection Visual Database

The Permanent Collection covers the modern century, from the art colony roots of the 1920s to artists active today. All traditional media are represented, and artifacts include AAN history documents, sketchbooks, biographical materials, photographs, and original show cards.

AAN welcomes Nantucket art history scholars and collectors to use AAN as a resource. Please review the list of past exhibitions curated by historian Robert Frazier below. You may also wish to contact Robert Frazier to reserve time for research or conversation.

The Permanent Collection Exhibitions

Folk Tales to Fine Art: A John Lochtefeld Retrospective

The 2019 PC Exhibition opens to the public June 3, with a grand reception June 28

John is both a knowledgeable student of art and prolific working artist who taught at both Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York and State College at Kutztown, Pennsylvania, but has spent the last decades in permanent residence on island. He greets everyone with a smile, for his studio is also his gallery. Besides a wide range of woodcuts and intaglio prints, you'll see watercolors, oils, and a few sculptures in wood embedded with photographs and John's quotable wisdom, curated in our gallery space at the Visual Arts Center.

This exhibition will delight everyone in the family with John's whimsical subjects.

“My work often has the quality of folk tales, but they are my tales.” -- John Lochtefeld

Recent Exhibitions from the Permanent Collection:
Curated by Robert Frazier

2018 - The Nature of Art: A Pat Gardner Retrospective; Master Printmakers; and Art Colony in the Greater Light, in collaboration with the Nantucket Historical Association, co-curated with Michael R. Harrison.

2017 - Wizard of the Whimsical: Tony Sarg’s Fantastic Art, co-curated with George Korn

2016 – Old Salts & Simpler Times: the Period Photographs of Pollak and Davidson; and Family Ties: Multigenerational Art from AAN

2015 – Seventy Years On, a 70th Anniversary Celebration

2014 – Nantucket Cottage Style: Drawing Inspiration from the Oates-Euler Collection, in collaboration with the Nantucket Historical Association; and Small Is Beautiful

2013 – Nantucket Moderns; John Austin: One Artist’s Nantucket, in collaboration with the Nantucket Historical Association; Four Grand Ladies; and Island Masters

2012 – The Waterfront Artists: Painters Who Changed Nantucket

2011 – Exiled on Main Street: The Main Street Gallery and its Fabulous Artists; and On Location

2010 – Icons: Influential Artists from AAN’s 65-year History

2009 – Sixty Years Ashore: A George Thomas Retrospective; and Small Works from a Big Heart

2008 – The Art Colony At Sea

2007 – An Island of Their Own, the First Ladies of Nantucket Art.

2005 – The Art Colony on Nantucket, co-curated with George Thomas