Arts and Culture

Artist Cathy Engberg celebrates life’s simple, everyday moments.  

Musicians and concert promoters are working their way back into larger live music events. Blackberry Smoke headlines one of two shows this weekend at the Corn Crib in Normal.

The gaming industry is becoming so big that Illinois State University’s Creative Technologies major is leveling up when it comes to game design.

Each autumn, Illinois State University offers kids in the community a chance to participate in a series of art classes, learning visual arts and drama. Naturally, those classes have a twist this year. 

Dominique Stevenson has been a very public figure in Bloomington-Normal this year. He founded the youth-based Next Gen Initiative. The social-justice group initiated several marches and education forums in the Twin Cities this summer.

North and west of Mason City, Iowa, there is a quarry belonging to the LeHigh Cement Company. It's huge. In a "what I did on my summer vacation" moment, ISU Geologist and Paleontologist James "Jed" Day said he found something very cool there.

Each year, Bloomington-Normal doctors put down their stethoscopes and pick up a violin, cello, guitar or other musical instrument for the annual Doctors in Concert fundraiser. 

Don’t let the cute fool you. 

A documentary film about an organic vegetable farmer in Woodford County is now available to a much wider audience.

Rapper and visual artist Grill Billyenz of Normal says the darker industrial sound on his latest album "Metamorph" comes from the ghost-town feeling he gets working the third shift at his "day job."

In recent years, the phrase, “That’s What She Said” has become a popular punchline. It also is the title of a series of live events that showcase everyday women. The series began in Champaign in 2013 and was supposed to come to Bloomington earlier this year until, well, everything shut down.

Now, it's going online Friday evening.

The doors to their theater may be closed, but Community Players has declared the show must go on. 

It was just standing there, empty. No concerts, no audience, no applause. No nothing. And that’s a sad state for a concert hall. 

Bloomington city staff will examine converting the Columbus Day holiday to one honoring indigenous people, with a majority of the city council indicating at least some support for researching the question during a Committee of the Whole session Monday night.

Illinois Art Station is on the move and making plans for an expanded future in Bloomington-Normal. 

Standing in solidarity and using fine arts as the form of expression, a downtown Black Liberation Celebration brought people of all demographics together Saturday to support the African American community in a plea for justice among injustices taking place nationwide.

For almost four months, the silver screen at the Normal Theater has remained dark. The seats  have been  empty. And that enticing scent of popcorn has been conspicuously absent. 

Works of art that once were part of private collections can now be enjoyed by the entire community at a new exhibition at the McLean County Arts Center in downtown Bloomington. 

A lot of statues in America have become problematic. People want to tear them down because they represent a part of history to be disavowed, or embody once heroic themes that now seem shameful.

Live theater has returned to the Twin Cities in a new project that guarantees audiences needn’t venture any further out than their own front porch.  

The fierce debate over the future of the Uptown Normal mural has inspired a documentary about the controversy and the role public art plays in our lives. 

Hundreds of Illinois Wesleyan University graduates are closely watching this week’s expected Board of Trustees decisions on the future direction of the institution. A variety of potential cuts and changes will be considered.

A group of students from Bloomington High School didn’t let anything stand in their way to curate the latest exhibition from University Galleries in Normal.