John Taylor “Ike” Williams, author of The Shores of Bohemia: A Cape Cod Story and Elliot Bostwick Davis, author and curator, Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape

Presented in partnership with the Cape Ann Museum and Provincetown Arts Association and Museum

Join us for a shimmering discussion about artists and their summer communities, the “utopias” they created for their friends, families, and students during the first half of the twentieth century on Cape Ann and Cape Cod. 

Their names are iconic: Edward Hopper, Charles Hawthorne, Hans Hoffman, Willem de Kooning, Josef and Anni Albers, and Walter Gropius. The artist residents of summertime seashore communities hold a special place in America’s history. To this day, in private collections, museums, and galleries, they portray our country in transition in the last century, its welcoming light and obscuring shadows, burgeoning with industrial and political power.

Join John Taylor “Ike” Williams and Elliot Bostwick Davis for a discussion of their new books looking at the vision and ascendancy of several celebrated artists associated with summer colonies and communities. Our presenters will spotlight individual paintings and measure the cultural impact and their creators who, imbued with summertime spirit and sensitivity, became our country’s cultural luminaries. Don’t miss these authors’ insights on Cape Ann and Cape Cod as it was experienced and represented by its artists, and the lasting impact of their work.

John Taylor "Ike" Williams is a founder of the literary agency Kneerim & Williams and a lawyer specializing in intellectual property and First Amendment litigation. He is the coauthor of the widely used textbook Perle, Williams & Fischer on Publishing Law. Williams has served as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts awards panel and as a trustee of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, among other positions.

Elliot Bostwick Davis has formerly servedas curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the John Moors Cabot Chair at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Director of the Norton Museum. She has published extensively on American art, from Winslow Homer to Mary Cassatt to Jamie Wyeth. She is also guest curator for the exhibition, Edward Hopper & Cape Ann: Illuminating an American Landscape, on view at Cape Ann Museum (Gloucester, MA), July-October 2023; and the author of its accompanying catalogue.