Florence Bradshaw Brown Harold Haven

Brown Beatrice Bradshaw Brown Barbara

The Malicoats
Haven Malicoat Philip Malicoat Conrad
Haven Malicoat Anne Lord Martha
Malicoat Dunigan Robena Malicoat
Breon Dunigan Bailey Bob Bailey Beau
Valtz Florence Bradshaw Brown Harold
Haven Brown Beatrice Bradshaw Brown
Barbara Haven Malicoat Philip Malicoat
Conrad Haven Malicoat Anne Lord Martha
F o u r G e n e r at i o n s o f a Fa m i l y C r e at i n g

Malicoat Dunigan Robena Malicoat

Breon Dunigan Bailey Bob Bailey Beau
Valtz Florence Bradshaw Brown Harold
Haven Brown Beatrice Bradshaw Brown
Barbara Haven Malicoat Philip Malicoat
Conrad Haven Malicoat Anne Lord Martha
Malicoat Dunigan Robena Malicoat
Breon Dunigan S e p t e m b e r Bailey
1 4 – O c t o b e rBob 9 , 2 0 0 9 Bailey Beau
Higgins Art Gallery
Valtz FlorenceC a p e C Bradshaw
od Community Col Brown
lege Harold
Introduction
On a mid-June morning after driving down the back roads
of Truro, I arrived at the home of the artists Breon Dunigan
and Bob Bailey to meet with Breon and her cousin
Robena Malicoat, grandchildren of the Provincetown
artists Phil Malicoat and Barbara Brown Malicoat. Familiar
with the work of several members of this storied artistic
family, my mission was to discuss an upcoming exhibit at
the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College.
Undoubtedly, the family’s multigenerational artistic and
varied works would make for an interesting exhibit.
Breon and Robena generously shared with me their
private collection of family art. This included their
grandmother Barbara Brown Malicoat’s exquisite lino
cut Christmas cards featuring a changing number
of grandchildren. Sitting at the dining room table
in the art-filled space, I was struck not only by the
generational aspect of the art work but also by the level
of accomplishment each family member individually
achieved. Indeed, the Malicoats—“Cape Cod’s first family
of art”—has had a profound influence shaping the culture
of our art community for four generations, dating back to
early 1900s.
This multifaceted family includes writers, musicians,
founders of museums and societies, printmakers,
designers, sculptors, stone masons and painters.
Strongly individualistic in style, technique, and genre, each
family member exhibits a strong sense of self coupled
with a family’s innate passion for art. The enduring
ON THE COVER:
Martha Malicoat Dunigan Philip Cecil Malicoat Conrad Haven Malicoat
Cannibal’s House
1999 - mixed media
Variations On A Theme
1968 - oil on canvas
Four Sided Mobius
1994 - mahogony
legacy of this family is the collective influence they have
had on the cultural life of our fragile peninsula. Their
ongoing involvement in the artistic community and their
commitment to the integrity of the artistic process is a
tribute to previous generations of Malicoats and art lovers
the Cape over.
Perhaps the essence of the Malicoat family and its most
recognized member—patriarch Phil Malicoat—was best
captured in a Provincetown Banner article by Gerry
Desautels: “Phil Malicoat was a boisterous man of great
artistic character, confident in his talents and unflinching
in his understanding of art as a metaphor and privileged
means for emulating life. His personal principles and
beliefs—ruled by simplicity, strength and steadfastness—
were directly translated to canvas and paper for 50
years…”
We hope you discover the mystery, history, complexity
and depth of the Malicoat family in this first-ever exhibit.
For four generations, the Malicoats have revealed our
collective souls in a variety of mediums and artistic
paths along the back roads of Cape Cod. Choose
your path, and discover as you like and be inspired. It is
with great pleasure that the Higgins Art Gallery at Cape
Cod Community College presents The Malicoats: Four
Generations of a Family Creating.
Betty Carroll Fuller, Director
Higgins Art Gallery at Cape Cod Community College
Higgins Art Gallery
Monday–Friday 10am–4pm
www.capecod.edu/web/higgins
Cape Cod Community College
2240 Iyannough Road
West Barnstable, MA 02668
508-362-2131 x4484
 The Malicoats: Four Generations of a Family Creating
Phil, Conrad, Barbara, Martha Malicoat circa 1940
“The Malicoats” show highlights four generations
of a family that has lived and worked on the
outer Cape for nearly 100 years. The Brown
and Malicoat families came to Provincetown in
the early 1900s, drawn by the emerging artistic
community and the extraordinary environmental
light. Today, a fifth generation of Brown-
Malicoats is coming of age in a town dramatically
different from the remote site cherished by their
grandparents and great-grandparents in the early
20th century. Happily, a commitment to the arts
still thrives in Provincetown and in the family.
One of Provincetown’s most prominent early
painters, Charles Hawthorne, traveled around
the country in the springtime to recruit summer
students for his school in Provincetown. He thus
met our great-grandfather, Harold Haven Brown,
who had been director of the John Herron Art
Institute in Indianapolis—both its museum and,
off and on, its art school—since 1913. They
became friends, and Hawthorne encouraged
Harold to come to Provincetown, describing it
Phil and Barbara Malicoat, France 1960 Barbara, Martha, Phil, Conrad Malicoat 1945
as “the closest to a seaside town in France that
you will find in this country.” Harold and his wife,
Florence Bradshaw Brown, who had each studied
art in Paris and wished to return to Europe, were
taken with his descriptions. They spent their
first summer here in 1919 with their daughters,
Beatrice and Barbara. In 1922, after several
summers in Provincetown, Harold left the John
Herron Art Institute to take the family to France
and Italy for a year. Upon their return, in 1923,
the family spent their first winter in Provincetown.
During their second winter in town, a heart attack
rendered Harold a semi-invalid, and the family
became year-round residents.
Meanwhile, our grandfather, Philip Cecil Malicoat,
who was five years younger than Barbara,
graduated from high school. Growing up a
farmer’s son in Oklahoma and then in Bedford,
Indiana, Phil had little exposure to the arts. But he
had always loved drawing and painting (producing
some in high school, “but…just of high school
quality and quantity”), and was quite taken with
The Malicoats: Four Generations of a Family Creating
several exhibitions that came through Bedford at
the time. Phil noted in a 1965 interview that his
own father felt he may have missed his calling
and so encouraged Phil’s pursuit of the arts. Phil
enrolled in the John Herron Art Institute in 1927.
He studied illustration and commercial art, but
quickly realized he simply wanted to paint. In
1929, having been nearly kicked out of art school
for lacking “the proper art spirit” (that is, wanting
simply to paint), he came to Provincetown to
study in Charles Hawthorne’s summer class. He
rounded Long Point on the steamship Dorothy,
and it was love at first sight. For two winters, he
went home to Indiana, where he “couldn’t find
anything to do to continue my studies or paint
or do anything.” He returned in the summers to
paint, and when summer turned to fall in 1931, he
made Provincetown his year-round home.
Barbara Haven Brown had spent a full decade
of summers and nearly as many winters in
Provincetown by the time Phil had spent his
first full year here. By then, Barbara’s parents
were well ensconced at the Provincetown Art
Association, where Harold became director in
1926, and Florence assistant director in 1928.
(She was director from 1932–1936.)
Barbara was a gifted graphic artist, and, after a
year of art school in Boston, took jobs illustrating
textbooks and designing cards. Beatrice had
taught in Boston, and the sisters created two
children’s books together, Beatrice writing and
Barbara illustrating. In 1931, Phil met Beatrice in
a Hensche painting class. When he came to call
on her, Barbara was home instead. That winter,
Wednesday evenings at the Beachcombers kept
a group of 20 or so members and their friends
busy putting on plays and generally having a good
time—including Phil and Barbara. They married
in September, 1932; Harold had passed away the
previous spring.
After their marriage, Barbara and Phil lived
in Provincetown and, like many during the
Depression, used various skills to scrape together
a living. Both describe a town of great artistic
camaraderie—and, for a spell, contention
between traditionalist and modernist art camps
regarding how work was juried, hung, and shown.
Phil and Barbara found support not only from
fellow artists, but also from the local Portuguese
population. Although summer visitors made town
more crowded, especially in August, the great
influx of short-term vacationers and day trippers
were not yet prevalent enough to take over the
roads and town.
The Malicoats’ daughter Martha was born
in 1934, their son Conrad in 1936. Over the
years that followed, while Martha and Conrad
attended the local public schools, Phil and
Barbara continued their artistic pursuits and
became active participants in the Provincetown
Art Association and various town administrative
boards. After World War II, painting sales picked
up. Finally, Phil was able to earn a living painting
and teaching alone. His interest in preserving
 The Malicoats: Four Generations of a Family Creating
the artistic community that had nurtured him as a
young artist led him to co-found Provincetown’s
Fine Arts Work Center in 1968.
While Barbara grew up in a more commercial art
family, and Phil grew up in a farming family with
little art around him at all, Martha and Conrad
grew up immersed in both commercial and
fine art, though a philosophy extolling the fine
arts prevailed. In 1952, Martha entered Oberlin
College in Ohio, and Conrad followed a year later.
Though the family thought Conrad would be the
practical family member, pursuing a BA in math
rather than in art, he switched at the last moment,
and both siblings graduated with degrees in
Studio Art.
Martha and Conrad both married within three years
of graduating from college and after short forays
to Europe. Martha met musician Philip Dunigan in
Provincetown, where he was playing in a summer
orchestra. They were married in 1958. Conrad
met fellow artist Anne Lord at the Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture, and they married
in 1960. Though both couples started married
life in New York City, Martha and Philip moved to
Winston Salem, North Carolina when Philip took
a teaching position at the North Carolina School
of the Arts in 1965. Martha eventually earned an
MFA and taught there as well. Conrad and Anne
settled in Provincetown in 1962. Like Barbara and
Phil, they served on town and art institution boards.
Conrad and Martha both became sculptors,
showing locally and nationally.
Martha and Philip had three daughters: Orin,
Breon, and Seanad Dunigan. Conrad and Anne
also had three daughters: Robena, Galen, and
Bronwyn Malicoat. All but one have returned to
or come to live on the lower Cape. Music and
arts were further nurtured in this fourth generation,
which includes writers and musicians. Like their
parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents
before them, they are active in Provincetown’s
various art institutions. Among them they have
nine children. Breon, a sculptor, and her husband,
Bailey Bob Bailey, a painter, are represented by
Art Strand in Provincetown; Robena, a painter,
is represented by the Schoolhouse Gallery, also
in Provincetown. Beau Valtz, Galen Malicoat’s
husband, has shown his work at the Schoolhouse
Gallery as well.
In a 1981 interview with Debbie Minsky, Barbara
noted that Conrad had come back to roost,
that Martha had returned to the lower Cape for
summers nearly her whole life (she did retire here
in 2000, but passed away only a year later), and
that the grandchildren appeared attached to
Provincetown, where their roots were so deep.
She commented: “…there’s something about this
place that’s very magnetic for a certain type of
person…and I think it always will be, I really do….”
Our lives have been greatly enriched by this little
seaside town—no longer the closest thing to a
French seaside town, but still replete with “the
proper art spirit.”
-Galen Lord Malicoat, September, 2009
Harold Haven Brown
Illustration, circa 1915
mixed media
Florence Bradshaw Brown
Illustration, circa 1915
mixed media
Beatrice Bradshaw Brown
Illustration, circa 1923
watercolor
Beatrice Bradshaw Brown and
Barbara Haven Brown
Illustration, circa 1927
pen and ink
Barbara Haven Malicoat
Untitled, circa 1965
colored linoleum print
 Philip Cecil Malicoat
“La Cadiere (variation)” 1960
oil on linen
Martha Malicoat Dunigan
“Cannibal’s House” 1999
mixed media
Conrad Haven Malicoat
“Fetal Stargazer” 2002
locust
Anne Lord
“Horse Vessel” 1999
clay
Robena Malicoat
“Lunaria” 2004
oil on canvas
Breon Dunigan
“Coercive” 2008
monoprint
 Bailey Bob Bailey
“Mound” 2007
acrylic, pencil, charcoal on canvas with steel
Beau Valtz
Untitled Mobile 2007
wood and stone
Orin Dunigan, Robena Malicoat, Galen Malicoat, Anne Lord, Breon Dunigan, Conrad Malicoat, Seanad Dunigan, Bronwyn Malicoat and Gandolph the dog (1969).
Photo by Stanley Einzig
 Robena and Galen Malicoat

A special thank you for the

generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Beinecke
pd Susie Perr y
508-564-5119
www.perr ydesignonline.com
and The Prospect Hill Foundation
perr y design