Twenty Summers

Twenty Summers is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organization based in Provincetown, Mass, founded to foster public engagement with art and artists, and to honor the legacy of art in Provincetown. From mid-May to mid-June each year, Twenty Summers hosts a month-long festival open to the public, featuring concerts, conversations, classes, and more, in the restored historic Hawthorne Barn. During this time the barn also becomes home to weekly artists in residency who use the barn’s space as was originally intended — to create art.

The Hawthorne Barn was built by painter Charles W. Hawthorne to house his Cape School of Art, which was later run by Abstract Expressionist Hans Hofmann, and served to inspire dozens of prominent artists and writers who studied or otherwise spent time in the barn, including Norman Rockwell, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Tennessee Williams and Norman Mailer. Our organization was founded with the dual aim of preserving the Barn itself, and maintaining its legacy as a place promoting the private creation of and public engagement with art.

Highlights of our 2018 season festival include a conversation between performer Alan Cumming and fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi; journalist Jodi Kantor gave us the back story of the investigations that took down Harvey Weinstein and launched the #MeToo movement; authors Michael Cunningham and Daniel Mendelsohn shared their literary inspirations; musicians Dar Williams, Kevin Morby and Overcoats each played and sang to sold-out audiences; and photographer Ryan McGinley transformed the space with an installation of his latest work on global LGBTQ+ equality. You can check out our full list of past events and resident artists here.

We also film and record all of our events which are shared as videos and podcasts on our website, free to all who could not attend them in person.