Twenty Summers

Iconic poets Sharon Olds and Mark Doty read from their influential collections, and discuss the secrets behind their fearless craft. This event took place on June 10, 2017, and was moderated by Provincetown poet Kelle Groom.

Blending country, folk, and rock styles, vocalist Lucy Kaplansky performed in the Hawthorne Barn, sharing original songs as well as covers of June Carter Cash, Gram Parsons, Lennon-McCartney, and Nick Lowe. This event took place on June 3, 2017.

As the latest installment of our ongoing tribute to the painters who worked and taught in the Hawthorne Barn when it was an art school, Marcelle Polednik, a museum director and curator, and Karen Wilkin, experienced art critic and curator, discussed and presented images from Hans Hofmann: Works on Paper, an exhibit they curated for MOCA Jacksonville in Florida, demonstrating the ever-evolving work of Hofmann and the inspiration he drew from Provincetown itself. This event and video were made possible by generous support from the Renate, Hans and Maria Hofmann Trust.

World-renowned architects Peter Bohlin and William Rawn discussed the current and future role of architecture and their experiences designing buildings private and public, including a look into Bohlin's incredible collaboration with Steve Jobs to design the infamous Apple Stores around the world. This event took place on June 10, 2017.

Twenty Summers welcomed authors Alysia Abbott (Fairyland) and Joan Wickersham (The Suicide Index) to the Barn, who have both written critically acclaimed memoirs about the fathers they loved and lost too soon. The two authors discussed their memoirs, their writing lives, and their other work in this deeply personal and fascinating conversation. WCAI was a media sponsor for this event. This event took place on May 13, 2017.

In 2012, author and journalist David France released the documentary How to Survive a Plague, the culmination of his decades-long coverage of the U.S. AIDS crisis. It won a New York Film Critics Circle Award and was an Oscar nominee. Last fall he published his book of the same title. In reviewing it for the New York Times, provocative political commentator Andrew Sullivan called it 'the first and best history of the courage behind the fight to end AIDS' and a reminder that if gay life and culture flourish for a thousand years, people will still say, 'This was their finest hour.' In bringing them together, we experienced a bracing discourse on politics, culture, history, and more. Boston Pride co-presented this event.

Performer, producer, singer, composer, and classically trained violinist, Emily Wells joins us in the Barn with her varied use of classical and modern instrumentation as well as her deft approach to live sampling. She has evolved into a uniquely modern singer and composer who uses a variety of instruments, from strings and drums to synths and beat machines, to create what NPR has praised as'gospel-folk music that's immersed in secular desires and experiences' and the New York Times as 'quietly transfixing.'

Authors Junot Diaz and Jacqueline Woodson join us for a conversation in the Barn that delves into the divisive politics of our age and what it means to be an American fiction writer of color today. Junot Diaz, whose work has been honored with a Pulitzer and a MacArthur, joins Jacqueline Woodson, whose books for readers of all ages have won prizes including a National Book Award and a Coretta Scott King Award. From his Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to her Brown Girl Dreaming, from his activist work in the Dominican-American community to her stories for teenage readers about what it means to grow up black and gay, Diaz and Woodson are writers who know how to raise their voices when it counts. WCAI was a media sponsor for this event.

Husband-and-wife duo David Wax and Suz Slezak, known as David Wax Museum, returned to the Barn for the second time to share their rousing Latin-folk-inspired indie rock. They performed a stripped down set of songs from their latest EP A La Rumba Rumba, a celebration of the Latin folk music that inspires them most, as well as tunes from their fourth full length album, Guesthouse.

Classical string quartet Aurea Ensemble play their own tribute to Moby-Dick, Melville and the Great White Whale, which features Beethoven, Webern, sea shanties, and other nautically evocative music along with readings from the novel and from Melville's correspondence with Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom he dedicated his masterpiece.