The Southcoast Artists Index
Documenting The Lives & Legacies of Southcoast Artists
The Southcoast Artists Index
For over a decade, The Artists Index has been documenting the legacies of visual, performing, literary, and culinary artists who currently live or were once connected to the south coast area of Massachusetts into our collaborative digital archive.
Our Southcoast Artists Index Podcasts offer listeners up close, personal, and informative conversations of the makers, performers, supporters, and cultural impresarios of the remarkable creative community of the South Coast. We aim to document every historical and contemporary artist for posterity and create an excellent reference and research resource for everyone, including scholars, genealogists, and educators.
The Artists Index invites all South Coast artists to contribute their stories to our growing archive. We want to hear about their background, passions, dreams, and accomplishments. Everyone is invited to share any information, documentation, and examples they may have about family, friends, and acquaintances who contributed to this creative community’s history.
Please help us continue our quest by following us, sharing our podcasts, sponsoring our programming, and underwriting new documentation activities. Your donation will allow us to bookmark our community’s artists’ place in history!
A Brief History
Our Inspiration!
The concept for The Southcoast Artists Index began with this New Bedford Standard-Times newspaper ad from the mid-1980s seeking assistance in finding information on nearly 150 individuals with the plea:
“A name, a birthday, an exhibition date… Mary Jean Blasdale would like to know more about the works of the following New Bedford artists. She can be contacted at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford.”
Mary Jean Blasdale, was the curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum until her retirement in 2006. She published the Artists of New Bedford: A Biographical Dictionary (1990) during her tenure there.
The website project was launched in July 2012 as a collaborative community digital archive by co-founders Ron Fortier and Jeff Wotton to continue the documentation of the creative community of the South Coast; its artists, art institutions, and art professionals of the past and present.
We’d love to hear what you’re looking for or any memories or information you have about an artist from the past – please let us know!
Listen to our podcasts here and read our articles here.
Our Team
Ron Fortier
Co-founder
Max Wickemeyer
Development Director
David Reis
Jazz Host
Claudia Negalha
Podcast Host
Sean FitzGerald
Gallery X Host
Scott Bishop
Music Host
Jeff Angeley
Music Host
Jeff Wotton
Co-founder
Our Gracious Sponsors.
Community partners who help support our mission.
In-Focus Podcasts are funded in part with grants from the New Bedford Cultural Council and the Fairhaven Cultural Council, local agencies supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
The Artists Index collaborates with the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Common Ground Project to collect and share the interwoven stories of the South Coast's creative community.
The Artists Index collaborates with The New Bedford Light and the New Bedford Light Fine Arts Club to promote and encourage the sale of emerging and established South Coasts artists' work.
The Gallery X Documentation Project is supported in part by the ARTnet/Wicked Cool Places grant funded by the City of New Bedford through the American Rescue Plan Awards and its Arts, Culture & Tourism Fund and is facilitated by New Bedford Creative at the NBEDC.
BE INCLUDED. BE COUNTED. BE FOUND.
