- [Narrator] There's a scrapbook that chronicles the life of an emerging artist with ties to New York and Paris before finding a meaningful home in the Ocean State.

We will explain the connection between this painting and one of the oldest art institutions in Rhode Island.

And later, a small museum with big stories to tell about this lighthouse and the role it has had on the history of this seaside village.

(upbeat music) This is "Treasures Inside the Museum".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (gentle music) Known as one of the oldest art clubs in the United States, behind its famous green doors are numerous treasures dating back from 1880 to modern day works of art.

Thanks to a group of professional artists and collectors, the Providence Art Club was started to support the visual arts, a mission they continue today.

- The Art Club was founded to be a multidisciplinary organization, to be a space to exhibit art and to study art and to talk about art, and classes are an important part of that.

And it's a way for people to engage in comradery as well.

You know, they come to class, they gather with other artists, they critique each other's work, and our galleries are always free and open to the public year round.

Every year in November and December, we do our Little Pictures show which focuses on works that are $350 or under.

So that's a really nice opportunity for people to purchase a work by a local artist, you know, support our members, and then also support the club and its mission.

- This is a living organization, that it's not a dusty, old museum or an intimidating place.

It's a place that carries its history, and that all of us who are a part of the club understand that history, because we are all living and working artists in and around the city and state.

And this is what's happening now in art in Rhode Island.

And so if you want to see some really good practitioners of the craft and want to understand what some of us are doing, you know, it's a good place to step into.

- [Narrator] While parts of the club are private, other galleries and areas are open for the public to explore.

Some exhibit spaces are dedicated to showing pieces from their permanent collection.

There are also galleries dedicated to other works of art that change regularly.

These spaces give member artists an opportunity to share current works with visitors with a discerning eye.

- I am always thrilled to show my pieces here.

There's just a level of quality and professionalism.

But more than that, it's a community of artists, and you get a lot of feedback from the other members of the club.

There are a number of events around the exhibition and opportunities to mingle and talk and get some feedback from other artists, which I think is really important.

You know, I'm working in my studio all the time by myself, and that kind of reception is really important to understand how I'm doing.

(chuckles) So this is work, a selection of work from the last couple of years.

I had been working at the time on an exhibition of paintings for Venice, Italy, and was looking a lot at Venice as a place of inspiration for my work, and somewhere that I had traveled to as a student, and later, several times, and I spent an extended stay there as an artist in residence at one point.

And so it's a place that's very near and dear to my heart.

And then this came out of that.

It wasn't a translation of that work, but a kind of result of just having been immersed in thinking about the wateriness and the sky and the colors of the city.

And then this work over here is a little newer, but still sort of working through inspirations and traditions of, actually, 19th century figurative painting that is informing a lot of what I do these days.

(gentle music continues) - [Narrator] While Rich's contemporary pieces represent a sample of today's artist, the Providence Art Club's permanent collection reflects the works of its past members.

Edward Bannister was one of the 16 founding members.

- He was born in Canada, New Brunswick, and lived in Boston for a number of years, where he met his wife, who was from Rhode Island, and they eventually moved here in 1869.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) He painted nature as though it was God's work.

And so we are lucky here at the club to own three wonderful paintings and a watercolor.

And this one, which is not hanging, is called "By the Brook".

This was presented to the club by Mrs. James Elgar in 1935, and it's rare that we know who gave something and when they gave it.

(gentle music continues) He was welcomed in Providence as a wonderful artist, got great reviews in the newspapers all the time, and he found in the landscape of Rhode Island, really, what he'd been searching for, a kind of landscape that inspired his spiritual nature.

(gentle music continues) Another painting that I consider a real treasure is this portrait of Charles E. Harry by a RISD professor named William Cushing Loring.

I don't know why he painted this portrait of Charles E. Harry, who became the steward of the Providence Art Club, but it probably was around the time when Loring had an exhibition here in 1917.

And to me, it's absolutely a fascinating portrayal because it's finely painted portrait, a very sensitive portrait, I think.

So, Charlie Harry was described as a kindly steward.

One of the reasons the painting is so fascinating is that the artist has turned it into a political statement with a picture of Abraham Lincoln up in the corner, because Charlie Harry was not from the South, he was never a slave.

I don't know whether he had... Way back, he obviously had enslaved persons in his family, but the artist was trying to bring attention to this, which is a good thing.

(gentle music continues) Another interesting story, I came across a huge box of photographs by a photographer, a woman named Rowena Brownell.

And I found this and took it out of its really poor matte and frame, and you see it has some staining on it, which is the case with a lot of these things that have been sitting around in this building for decades and decades.

And it turned out that this particular photograph was exhibited in, I think it was the Providence Camera Club.

And she was quite a well-known photographer in her day.

She had an exhibition here.

And so it's my mission now to do a little more research on her and get this picture properly preserved and exhibited, and maybe highlighted in some kind of media so we all know who Roberta Brownell is.

- [Narrator] Preserving their vast collection is part of the Providence Art Club's mission, and can serve as an inspiration.

Each piece offers a connection to the past.

- We've been here for a long time, and the the Art Club was founded in 1880.

And since then, we've been collecting artworks of notable artist members.

And they've sort of come in by, some by design, some by accident.

Some were just left here like an umbrella by the door almost, as we say.

And little by little, over the 140 years, we've assembled a collection of probably 600 works.

- [Narrator] Rhode Island natives, Percy and Grace Albee, were active Art Club members.

Grace graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and became a noted historical print maker in the US and Paris, breaking the glass ceiling by balancing being an artist and mother.

- These particular pieces here are recent gifts to the Art Club, and we were given a gift of five prints by a patron.

And they're rather small, unassuming prints in and of themselves, but framed up together, they make quite a nice presentation.

And they were all done when she and her husband and her five children lived in Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

This one is called "The Sardine Fisherman".

He's at the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College.

He's also in the Met.

The Met, by the way, has a large collection of Grace Albee prints, and they're all listed if you go into their collection online, but none are illustrated.

This is called "Brenton Types".

These are unusual for her, too, in that they are figurative, too.

She didn't do a lot of figures.

But these are all sort of small and unassuming, so I did bring one piece out of my collection.

It's of the fountains in the Luxembourg Gardens of Paris, and I think this one really shows what she can do.

Very talented printmaker.

But this is really one of her, I think, more lovely pieces as well.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Whether it's pieces from their permanent collections or recent works by member artists, the galleries at the Providence Art Club change regularly.

It's a way to engage the public and encourage visitors to become patrons.

The buildings here are rich with history, including much of the decor and furniture.

- The Friday Knights table really is my very favorite object in the Providence Art Club, in a building full of old, wonderful things, just because it speaks to the aesthetic of making things yourself, making them by hand, taking responsibility for the aesthetic of this place, not going shopping, but making sure that what you have is what you want.

And the men who built this table were not professional cabinet makers.

They were just good-hearted people who enjoyed the experience of working with their hands.

It was Charles Walter Stetson who engraved the names of the Friday Knights on the top.

At the top, you can see where it says Friday Knights in 1887.

And then Stetson's name is here.

The letters are most irregular.

He's got an elevated O in the last letters of his name.

It just looked rather funky for the times, and that's the way they liked it.

Sydney Burley's name is here, another painter.

George Whitaker's name is here.

But we also find here the names of business people in town who supported the club.

And so here's Gustav Radeke, a physician whose family founded the RISD Museum, and other insurance brokers and bankers in town.

And Isaac Bates, a great patron of the arts in Providence, and businessman and a merchant in town.

You can see how well worn this table is.

It gets good use.

It's well over a century old.

And in the summer, we come in and get a glass of ice water on our way into lunch, and in the winter, we come in and get hot chocolate on our way into lunch.

It's a piece of working furniture, and that's the way this club works.

Everything here is used.

There's nothing too precious to be put aside.

Everybody enjoys the use of this table.

It's not often that we stop and pull back the tablecloth and read the names, so this is really one of those treasures that is here that people can sometimes walk right by.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Among the treasures here is this collection of pieces from Florence Kane.

She was a sculptor who spent her summers in Narragansett, but the Art Club quickly became a second home, and those in it, family.

In addition to sculptures, the holdings include meticulously kept notes and scrapbooks documenting her works.

Researchers and scholars can now access these and learn about her process.

- So this is one of Florence Kane's scrapbooks that we have here in the collection at the Providence Art Club.

When Florence Kane passed away in 1955, she left the bulk of her papers with the Art Club.

These are images of her when she was studying.

She studied both in New York and also in Paris.

And it really provides a snapshot into what her life as an emerging artist was like.

We can see her here in her artist's smock, and she's working on a clay maquette for a bust that she was creating.

And this is in 1917.

And then she was also a meticulous cataloger of all the work she had made.

She has photographs of some of the pieces she was working on in multiple stages and from multiple angles.

She was very incredibly, incredibly organized.

She also was very interested in celebrating people who had been significant in her life.

She has a bust of one of her instructor's images of classes she took when she was in New York.

And then again, you know, continues to document all the work that she was making.

She was a very productive artist throughout her career.

The Art Club has, to my knowledge, the most significant holdings of Florence Kane's work anywhere, because she really was interested in leaving her legacy to the Art Club.

She studied in Paris as well, and lived there in France for a long time, and she created a memorial to Lamartine in France, which was recognized in the French papers.

And she worked there extensively, and these are some images from that period of her life as well.

And some of the most enjoyable images in the collection are things like this, you know, this young, excited artist standing with some of the work that she was making.

This was in one of the studios where she was studying.

She worked in a process where she would create plaster or clay maquettes of things.

This is a maquette for a piece that the Providence Art Club owns.

What's interesting about this piece is that the final artwork, which is in bronze, is quite different than the maquette that she has in progress there.

And then another piece that's in this image is actually this maquette that's in front of us.

One of Florence's favorite subjects were animals.

One of the first pieces that she made was of a Scottie dog.

That was one of the first pieces she made when she was a child.

And something that she became very attracted to as a more mature artist were equestrian subjects like this.

This is a maquette.

I don't know if it was executed in bronze, but this would be the stage before bronze.

You can see the armature under here, the metal armature.

And then she would've put plaster on top of that.

And then she's painted it so that it looks like bronze.

It would've originally looked much more like bronze, I'm sure.

You can see the proficiency, especially in the face here, the way that she's captured the horse, very naturalistic.

You know, she was an artist who studied and studied and studied the subject matter, especially of animals, she was very interested in that.

And then other subjects that she turned to would've been something like this relief here.

This is a relief bust of Bradford Swan.

Brad Swan was a fellow member of hers at the Providence Art Club.

He was also the theater and art critic for the Providence Journal for many years, so he was an art world luminary who she would've been friends with, who she would've known.

And she's very interested in honoring people through her sculpture.

She's interested in honoring friends, she was interested in public figures, but she's also interested in showing off her contemporaries in work like this.

And this is another piece that would've been a preparatory piece for an eventual bronze work, and this is executed also in clay and painted plaster.

And you can see where it broke at some point, and I think it was fixed during her lifetime, actually.

So we have a really remarkable archive here of all kinds of different work that she was making, which captures a lot of her varied interests, so it's a lot of fun.

- [Narrator] In keeping with the tradition of those who founded the club, members are dedicated to preserving and sharing the visual arts in Providence, Rhode Island.

It's a place to explore and be inspired.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music) You can't write the history of Westerly without talking about Watch Hill, and you can't tell the story of Watch Hill without the lighthouse.

For over 200 years, Watch Hill Light has played an important role in the shoreline community.

Preserving the history of the lighthouse and its keepers is the mission of the Watch Hill Lighthouse Keepers Association.

Their museum here is small, but the treasures are rich and help to piece together the history of this seaside village.

- We have a series of letters that were donated to us by a local Westerly woman whose family has been in Westerly since it was incorporated in the 1600s.

In the 1870s, a number of shipwrecks, quite dramatic, occurred off Watch Hill Point, and the United States established a lifesaving station down at the northern entrance so that there could be a defined series of training sessions and that there would be kept a number of lifesaving boats.

These letters are from Jonathan Nash, who was the first lighthouse keeper here at the lighthouse.

And Nash was coordinating with the lifesaving station and interviewing young men who wanted to come and work at the station.

And what's fascinating is that they show a little window into the history of this lifesaving station.

Many people come to the lighthouse, but they're unaware of the role the lifesaving station played here in Watch Hill and Westerly.

In order to protect this community, the active engagement of these crewmen was vital.

And the lifesaving stations no longer stand, but to see the handwritten notes exchanging words between the keeper, Nash, and this young man who wanted to work in the lifesaving station, that's a priceless window into the history of this really vital piece of Westerly history.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) - [Narrator] In addition to letters, the museum collection also includes artifacts, documents, and old photographs, including one donated by local resident, Andrew Barber.

- The lighthouse was a beacon to identify not only the proximity to the shore, but also to let the traffic know that there was reefs in the area.

The photograph that I donated kind of really identifies the period where there was little or no vehicular traffic.

It was a cart path.

It was accessed by horse and buggy.

So, the road to the building was really, you know, lightly traveled.

So I thought that that was very significant to see sort of a period of time when it was manned, you know, there was a family living here, a lighthouse keeper, but not much evidence of anything else.

It was really almost an island.

As time goes on, those treasures will become fewer and fewer.

The artifacts and some of the history that's been kept through family members, or even just in households that get passed on, sometimes can be overlooked.

And if they're overlooked, they can disappear for forever.

So, what we're able to do here is take a snapshot of the coast guard's presence, of the lighthouse keeper's presence, of the changes that have gone on the coastline in the past 2 or 300 years.

We hope to be part of retaining that history.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Throughout its history, the light source has changed from an open flame to the automated light that sits inside the tower today.

Perhaps the most impressive was the lens that now sits inside the museum.

- It's a fourth order Fresnel lens, and it was in the tower of the lighthouse we believe since the end of the 19th century.

A fourth order lens is rather a medium sized lens.

There were eight orders in total, as we understand it, ranging from the first order of these lenses, the largest, down to the eighth order, which is quite small.

So this, as you can see, is kind of a medium, it's about three feet in height, a medium lens.

And the Fresnel lens was invented by Augustin Fresnel in France right around 1820, 1822.

The design of the lens, with the multiple glass panels, actually refracts the light and intensifies the beam.

A lighthouse prior to the invention of these lenses would have a burning kerosene or whale oil light, and the light scatters.

The use of these lenses and the way that they're designed by Fresnel allows the refracted light to establish a much stronger, more direct beam.

These are incredibly priceless today, so it really is a treasure for us to have it.

- [Narrator] The waters off Watch Hill have claimed hundreds of lives over the years.

What they don't count is how many ships were safely guided to port thanks to the beacon here at the Watch Hill Lighthouse.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music)