Arts and Culture

A noted historian says it's fair to compare President Trump and Adolf Hitler, at least in one respect.

It seems like a new biography of President Abraham Lincoln comes out every few years, trying to discern new perspectives of his time and character. Lincoln himself didn't write much about his life, so what he did put down on paper has an outsized importance.

The spirit of Karl Marx is alive and well and living in America. That's according to Illinois State University history professor Andrew Hartman, whose new book is "Karl Marx in America."

A Trump administration effort to remove the federal government from wide swaths of American life continues to spread. Libraries and museums in Bloomington-Normal and around Illinois also will feel the impact.

The Normal Public Library is just a few months away from finishing its roughly $7 million renovation and asbestos removal project even as another big capital expense looms.

Jimmy Buffett's longtime bassist says if he weren't a musician, he’d be a psychologist. Jim Mayer not only continues to tour with the Coral Reefers, the band of the late Buffett, he plays in hundreds of schools per year, trying to teach kids social-emotional skills.

Harold Gregor was a Midwest landscape artist who passed away in 2018. His wife, Marlene Gregor, is selling his work at Cometogetherspace in Bloomington.

Superfans and scholars of Abraham Lincoln are getting access to a new online research tool.

A Bloomington psychotherapist is trying to show the devastation of war through her photos. Laurie Bergner saw impoverished people in refugee camps near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Happy birthday Abraham Lincoln. He’s 216. The McLean County Museum of History is hallmarking Lincoln’s Feb. 12 birthday with the start of a coloring contest to celebrate Lincoln and work on a mural showing a famous speech he made in Bloomington.