Independent Iowa News, Culture & Events – music, government, listings, theatre, film, and local perspective
Hancher Auditorium, lead by executive director Andre Perry, announced that they are producing a new music and arts festival scheduled for this coming Spring. The Stop/Time Festival is billed as a “two-day, multi-venue, multi-artist spring festival devoted to innovation and independence in contemporary music and the arts.”
The first edition of Stop/Time Festival launches Friday, April 3 through Saturday, April 4 in Iowa City.
In April of 1993, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, Makomé M’Bowole, along with two of his friends, was chased down at 4:30 a.m. carrying 120 cartons of Dunhill Cigarettes. His friends were released later in the morning, but M’Bowole was not. Twelve hours after his arrest, inside the 18th Arr. Police Precinct in Paris, he was dead. Director Mathieu Kassovitz was 25 years old when Inspector Compain was on trial for the murder of M’Bowole. Kassovitz would have heard the narrative.
The Minnesota Orchestra, under new Music Director Thomas Søndergård, performed at Hancher Auditorium earlier this month, on Nov. 15. The performance saw the return of the ensemble to the University of Iowa, as their last visit came in 1982. Before that, the Orchestra made regular visits through the decades prior, with a a partnership that […]
Hotel Chauncey will close on Sunday and hotelVetro has already closed. Like SpareMe Bowl & Arcade, which will close its doors for the final time on Wednesday night, the two downtown Iowa City hotels are owned by Hawkeye Hotels. The closure of the two hotels was first reported by Corridor Business Journal on Monday. Hawkeye […]
SpareMe Bowl & Arcade is closing. The downtown Iowa City bowling alley will shut its door for the last time on Wednesday night, SpareMe announced Friday on social media. It will be open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. until then. Heather Soseman, SpareMe’s general manager, told Little Village she was told informally last […]
A great book gifted by someone special in your life, especially during your formative years, can become a keepsake. I regularly purge décor, art, clothes and, yes, books, but my permanent reading collection is a part of my identity. This list of books for youth in middle and high school runs the gamut of genre and […]
If there’s anything we all could use at the end of 2025, it’s comforting food with good company. Helping patrons get into the holiday feasting mindset, Hancher Auditorium hosted a conversation with acclaimed chef and author Samin Nosrat and Iowa City’s own Carmen Maria Machado on Nov. 13. The auditorium, buzzing with food enthusiasts of […]
The Chauncey, along with two more well-known Iowa City buildings, went under the hammer at the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office auction on Tuesday, and there were no bidders for any of them. That means GreenState Credit Union still owns the Chauncey (404 E College St), Plaza Towers (221 E College St) and Park@201 (201 E […]
After 143 years as a locally owned, independent newspaper, the Gazette is being acquired by a Minnesota-based multimedia company. The Cedar Rapids paper broke the news on Tuesday morning of a purchase agreement between Folience, Inc. — formerly known as the Gazette Company — and Adams MultiMedia (AMM). According to the Gazette, the sale is […]
Music has been the driving force in Diego Raya’s life for as long as the 35-year-old hip hop emcee can remember. After his family moved from Mexico to Moline when he was about 12, he started writing poetry. At Moline High School, he began making music — just as his favorite rapper, El Díablo, stopped. […]
The City of Iowa City is holding a food drive on Friday to support CommUnity Crisis Services and Food Bank. Donations to Neighbors Helping Neighbors Food Drive will be collected between 1 and 4 p.m. at the Fareway off Mormon Trek Boulevard (2530 Westwinds Dr), the North Dodge Hy-Vee (1125 N Dodge St) and the […]
On a Sunday morning, I quietly made my way through the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art’s second-floor galleries to “Powerful: The Art of Käthe Kollwitz,” on display through Jan. 4, 2026. I entered, sat on a wooden bench, collected myself and looked around, much as I would before a mass. Julia Jessen, curator of Collections […]
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