Growing Up With Helen Frankenthaler on Cape Cod

As a Frankenthaler show opens in Provincetown, stepdaughter Lise Motherwell recalls childhood summers with the artist there—and the emotional resonance of exhibiting the work where it was made

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On July 6, 26 works by Helen Frankenthaler go on view at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM), in the Cape Cod enclave the artist called home during an especially fruitful phase of her 60-year career. The show will comprise paintings, photographs and ephemera primarily from the 1960s, when she and her then-husband, the painter Robert Motherwell, would decamp to Provincetown in the summer. (The exhibition will travel to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York, next year.)

A born-and-bred New Yorker,...