Nancy Joly of Rachel Adler, New York City, stands next to Alexander Archipenko’s bronze “Turning Torso,” 1921-22.

DENNIS, MASS. – Cape Cod is the appropriate place to celebrate the achievements of some of America’s finest maritime artists. From April 28 to July 15, the Cape Museum of Fine Arts will host the Twelfth National Exhibition of the American Society of Marine Artists.

The exhibition will include 80 works of art with a variety of media, subjects and approaches to composition by contemporary marine artists. All exhibited works are representational paintings and sculptures and many of the artists have been to sea professionally. That experience, according to Peter Rogers, the marine society’s vice president, makes “painting in a realist manner a vocation and craft hard to turn-one’s back on.”

The exhibition’s East Coast appearance is the first in a decade and its first ever on Cape Cod. William Muller and Donald Stoltenberg, Cape Cod ASMA members and artists in the exhibition, were instrumental in persuading the society to have the exhibition appear in the newly expanded Cape Museum of Fine Arts.

The American Society of Marine Artists (ASMA) was begun in 1979 when a small group of artists gathered together to “…recognize, encourage and promote marine art and maritime history.” Offering the opportunity for all interested parties, artists and non-artists alike, to come together in their love of the sea and its environs, the society has grown to over 700 members from 46 states. It is based in Ambler, Penn.

A few of the 80 artists in the exhibition are Christopher Blossom, Leonard Mizerek, Nancy Braginton-Smith and Charles Kenney. About 30 of the artists are from New England, with five actually from Cape Cod.

Cape Museum of Fine Arts is on Route 6A. For information, 508-385-4477.