A fascinating exploration of both a well-known German-American blacksmith and a revolutionary addition to the transportation industry, Immigrant Innovators: The Fruehauf Trailer Company will be on display at Davenport's German American Heritage Center from March 23 through June 29, the exhibit offering insight into the company’s origins, its development over the decades, and its ultimate downfall after the Fruehauf family’s involvement.
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Presented as part of the Davenport venue's popular “Kaffee und Kuchen” series, the German American Center's March 23 program Singing Wheels: August Fruehauf & the History of the Fruehauf Trailer Company will find August's granddaughter Ruth Fruehauf celebrating the exhibit opening of Immigrant Innovators: The Fruehauf Trailer Company, August's invention of the truck trailer having played a key role in transforming transportation in the 20th century.
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On March 23, fans of the BBC and Netflix sensation The Great British Baking Show are invited to Join UK travel/relocation consultant and former UK resident Claire Evans at Moline's Butterworth Center for a delightful culinary tour of the country. Evans' in-person presentation The Great British Baking Tour will offer insight on making a proper cup of tea, as well as regional specialties, their origins, and the particular parts of the UK they hail from. She’ll also translate the trickiest parts of British recipes for Americans, so you can try them in your own kitchen.
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An engaging and fascinating exhibit developed by the Davenport venue's curatorial staff, the Putnam Museum & Science Center's Indigenous Roots of Mexican Americans will, beginning March 22, treat guests to artifacts and textiles from areas in Mexico that are housed together alongside some 250,000 objects from the Putnam’s collections.
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With the in-person event held in celebration of Women's History Month, the Rock Island Public Library Watts-Midtown Branch will host An Evening with Jasmine Babers-Gunn on March 25, the Rock Island native and founder of Love Girls Magazine on hand to share her inspirational story and work, as well as the importance of why, when girls speak, we should listen.
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I don't know anyone who isn't touched by the compassion and trust between human and animal that bonds us together for life, while simultaneously becoming thoroughly disgusted with government regulatory abuse that interferes with the best part of human-animal interaction, after learning the story of Peanut the squirrel.
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Nature’s Treatment of Illinois (NTI) has done so well in Milan that it wants to fly the coop and a build a bigger nest in Rock Island. Local environmentalists are keeping an eagle eye on a $12-million-plus development plan next to Bally’s Quad Cities Casino & Hotel to ensure that wildlife and wetlands are protected.
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Representative Marty Moylan (D-Des Plaines) recently told me he was “astonished” by some Chicago Transit Authority employee paychecks. Representative Moylan, the Chair of the House Transportation: Rail Systems, Roads, and Bridges Committee, is heading into the transit-funding discussions armed with an inch-and-a-half-thick binder filled with CTA salary data. The agency’s gross payroll for all employees in 2024 was close to a billion dollars.
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Saturday March 8, 2025 the 6th Annual Oberholzter Awards were hosted by the Nahant Marsh organization at The Bend event center in East Moline, Illinois. This year's award winners are listed below along with more information about why each was nominated and chosen for the award.
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Advocates say a major storm is brewing that could overwhelm the state’s child foster-care system. The problem is legal liability insurance, or, more specifically, the lack thereof.
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The art-deco ties for the gentlemen and lovely dresses on the ladies made the whole evening feel like a true blast from the past.
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Winner of five Tony Awards and one of the most memorable, iconic, and popular musicals of the last several decades, legendary composer Stephen Sondheim's Assassins enjoys a March 21 through 23 staging at the University of Dubuque's Heritage Center, a production performed by students in the university's Department of Fine and Performing Arts. A twisty, tuneful tale of famed and obscure killers (and would-be killers), the show was lauded by the New York Times for its “astonishing score” in which “sly distortions of familiar musical tropes approximate the skewed ways in which these characters hear everyday melodies.”
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For those those who "aaaarrrrrr" ready for some hilarious, musical fun on the high seas, the Circa '21 Dinner Playhouse will be staging the eagerly awaited return of the family comedy How I Became a Pirate from March 25 through April 19, this sublimely silly show adapted from the beloved children's book written by Melinda Long with illustrations by David Shannon.
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A Tony Award-winning drama and the seventh play in author August Wilson's legendary 10-part series The Pittsburgh Cycle, Two Trains Running will enjoy a national-tour stop at Galesburg's Orpheum Theatre on March 26, this lauded production by The Acting Company and director Lili-Anne Brown treating audiences to the 1990 stage classic that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
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The 19th-century author of some of history's creepiest stories will serve as the inspiration for mistaken-identity hilarity when Geneseo's Richmond Barn Theatre opens its 2025 season with The Tell-Tale Farce, playwright Don Zolidis' witty and wacky comedy slapstick that enjoys an area engagement April 3 through 13.
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Touring in support of their January release We're Gonna Make It, an album that Entertainment Focus lauded as "authentic, emotionally resonant, and musically compelling," the touring country-music talents of LANCO play a special March 25 engagement at the University of Dubuque's Heritage Center, their latest recording also inspiring Country Swag to rave, "There are hints of nostalgia and broken hearts mixed with triumph and hope, all weaved together in a uniquely cohesive package."
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With the 2024 release of If I Don't Make It, I Love U inspiring The Guardian to call its creators "the most vital band in Britain today," the London-based, experimental, post-punk, art-rock outfit Still House Plants brings their national tour to Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on March 26, The Guardian adding of last year's breakout hit, "We will be blessed indeed if we get a better album from these shores all year."
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With TJPL News raving that the duo's vocals are "totally gorgeous, expressing different vocal ranges with catchy lyrics," the Montana-based indie-pop outfit Desperate Electric headlines a March 26 concert at Davenport's Raccoon Motel, the Billings Gazette stating that the bold bounce of the musician's music proves that "Desperate Electric aren't just a band. They’re a vibe."
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Internationally acclaimed throat singers whose American credits include touring with Béla Fleck & the Flecktones to promote the Grammy-winning album Jingle All the Way that featured the Russian talents as guest artists, the musicians of Alash make an eagerly awaited return to Rock Island's Rozz-Tox on March 27, the trio noted for their subtle infusion of modern influences into traditional folk music.
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Like the romantic sweep of a Rachmaninoff concerto, Marian Lee's passion for music is visionary, powerful, and awe-inspiring.
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“You know which reviews of yours I really like?” asked a friend not long ago. “The short ones.” Taking that as a compliment for my more succinct pieces and not as the insult it almost certainly was, here are 300-word takes on the half-dozen movies I saw between Thursday and Sunday. They're presented in order of viewing, and preceded by five-word synopses that might, in effect, provide greater impetus to see or ignore said films than the subsequent wordage ever could.
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Going to the cineplex or staying in and streaming this weekend? Every Thursday morning at 8:15 a.m. you can listen to Mike Schulz dish on recent movie releases & talk smack about Hollywood celebs on Planet 93.9 FM with the fabulous Dave & Darren in the Morning team of Dave Levora and Darren Pitra. The morning crew previews upcoming releases, too.
Or you can check the Reader Web site and listen to their latest conversation by the warm glow of your electronic device. Never miss a pithy comment from these three scintillating pundits again.
Thursday, March 20: Discussion of The Electric State, Black Bag, Novocaine, The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, Opus, and Omni Loop, and previews of Snow White, Locked, and The Alto Knights, the latter featuring Robert De Niro acting opposite a first-time co-star: Robert De Niro.
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Bong's latest may not be Parasite, but the writer/director's adaptation of Edward Ashton's 2022 novel Mickey7 is still an almost overwhelming amount of fun.
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An iconic title from Hong Kong's legendary writer/director Wong Kar-wai enjoys a special screening in the Figge Art Museum's springtime Free Film at the Figge series, with In the Mood for Love, on March 27, treating audiences to a work the New York Times called "breathtakingly gorgeous," and one that was included on Sight & Sound's esteemed list of the greatest motion pictures of all time.
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Now playing at area theaters.
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Nearly 200 works by gifted student artists will be on display at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center from March 28 through May 1 in the expansive 48th High School Art Invitational, a glorious celebration of local talent featuring the Quad Cities’ most promising artists expressing themselves through paintings, drawings, sculpture, paper, recycled materials, and film.
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With the gifted artist on hand to introduce her exhibition, artistic practice, and techniques, an exhibit celebration and artist talk for Louise Kames: I Don’t See Anything That’s Not Beautiful will take place at Davenport's Figge Art Museum on April 3. Focused on creating works that explore the beauty of natural decay, the line between life and death, and what remains after, Kames will reflect on both her career and her current Figge showcase, which boasts large woodcut prints and charcoal and pastel drawings of a dying willow tree from her yard in Dubuque,
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A fascinating and absorbing collection of abstract art is currently on view in the Black Hawk College ArtSpace Gallery, as gifted Midwestern artist Kent Broadbent showcases recent works in New & Improved, the fascinating pieces on display through April 4.
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Notable and engaging works by 10 artists from Iowa and Illinois will be housed in the Quad City Arts International Airport Gallery through April 29, with Moline's airport showcasing floral paintings by Kathleen Rietz, landscape paintings by Evan Ventris, and 19 works by eight of the region’s finest woodturners.
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With the exhibition's originator revered for creating Vodou flags known as drapo for more than 35 years, as well as for pushing the boundaries of this traditional Haitian art form, Myrlande Constant: DRAPO will be on display in the Figge At Museum's fourth-floor gallery through May 4, the artist's escalating interest in expansive proportions finding some of the 17 works in the exhibition spanning more than seven feet.
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