The Center for Coastal Studies begins its 2023 Napi’s Lecture Series on January 25 with writer, film maker and curator Philip Hoare. Since 2001, Hoare has visited Provincetown annually and the New York Times, in reviewing his most recent book, Albert & the Whale, called the author a ‘forceful weather system’ of his own.
In Albert & The Whale, Hoare sets out to discover why the work of 15th century artist Albert Dürer endures. Along the way, Hoare encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and enigmatic stars. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer’s fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare and traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. Throughout the book, Albert & The Whale asks ‘does art have the power to save us?’
The presentation will be offered in person at 7 p.m. at the Center’s offices and lab at 5 Holway Avenue in Provincetown and virtually on Zoom. Admission is free, but registration for the virtual presentation is required. Please sign up online. (https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_O13p-47_QSCkj_Iv-Q28Pg)
Hoare says he owes his career to John Waters, another Provincetown denizen, who gave his first book its front page review in the New York Time Book Review. ‘John is my literary punk godfather’, he has said.
Hoare’s books have been featured on best-seller lists in the UK and USA, and are published in translation in Russia, China, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Italy. They include Serious Pleasures: The Life of Stephen Tennant and the authorized biography of Noël Coward, both of which received front cover reviews in the New York Times Book review. Wilde’s Last Stand, England’s Lost Eden, and Spike Island were followed by The Whale, inspired by his visits to Provincetown and his encounters with its whales, was winner of the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction. The Sea Inside and his last book, RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, in which his love of Provincetown features strongly—acclaimed as ‘a masterpiece’ by The Observer—were both serialized as BBC Radio Books of the Week.
Philip is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Southampton, and is a regular contributor to The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/profile/philip-hoare. He is Special Ambassador to Whale and Dolphin Conservation, and swims every day in the sea. Even in Provincetown in January.
The Napi’s Lecture Series continues on February 22 at 7 p.m. with Sarah Oktay, CCS executive director, and Owen Nichols, manager of the CCS Marine Fisheries Program, on March 30 at 7 p.m. with Mark Adams, CCS Science/Artist-in-Residence and April 19 at 7 p.m. with Mark Borrelli, director of the CCS Seafloor Mapping Program.
The Napi’s Lecture Series occurs annually in tribute to Anton “Napi” Van Dereck Haunstrup, founder of Napi’s Restaurant in Provincetown and a longtime friend to the Center for Coastal Studies. Located in Provincetown since 1976, the Center for Coastal Studies is a marine lab dedicated to understanding, preserving and protecting marine ecosystems and the coastal environment. Find out more at www.coastalstudies.org.
Image Caption: Photo by Jeroen Hoekendijk. Philip Hoare looks through the preserved eye of a fin whale.
