On May 18, 2025, the city of Davenport, Iowa began to glow. Nestled amongst the downtown’s old buildings, the Figge Art Museum celebrated its 20th anniversary by unveiling Evanescent Field, an architectural art project by internationally acclaimed light artist Leo Villareal. Hundreds of onlookers gathered in the promenade to the already stunning museum designed by […]
Arts Review
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Indigenous art meets comic books, children’s toys and mythology in Cara and Diego Romero’s “Tales of Futures Past” at the Figge
Artists Cara (Chemehuevi) and Diego (Cochiti) Romero’s traveling exhibition Tales of Futures Past premiered this month at the Figge Art Museum in Davenport. Cara and Diego Romero are indigenous artists who work in different mediums exploring the diversity and impact of indigenous identity.
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Review: BiRDMAN LiVE offers Antonio Sanchez’s grounded, in-the-moment musical reactions
Birdman Live, which came to the Englert Theatre on March 1, features Antonio Sanchez playing drums to the movie Birdman — which makes sense, as he was the composer and performer for the score, which is one of the only scores to feature drums. Before the movie, Sanchez offered a short biographical account of his […]
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Arts Review: To Lead One Beyond All Paintings
Heidi Van Wieren’s paintings on view at the Englert’s second floor gallery space are magnificent objects. They are everything one wants an abstract painting to be: thick paint slides and wrinkles down the surface of the panel with fiendishly slow intensity. Materials congeal to create mesmerizing visual patterns. Compositions are engaging and surprising. They are […]
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Arts Review: Gaia Nardie-Warner’s “Limelight”
I stopped by Public Space One the day after the opening of Gaia Nardie-Warner’s “Limelight,” and the gallery space had its fluorescent lights on. These had been turned off during the opening, so that track lighting provided the paintings’ only illumination. I therefore experienced them under both flattering and unflattering lights, and was struck by […]
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Arts Review: A Set of Lies Agreed Upon
The question of how emperors and imperial aspirants fashion their cult status through images is, given our place in the present election cycle, relevant. An exhibition that raises questions and provides insight into the ways that visual propaganda shapes the image of an actual or potential government leader would have been edifying in the current […]
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Arts Review: Following the “Water” – on Josh Hoeks installation at UI Studio Arts
Josh Hoeks calls Water a “structural intervention” to his studio at The University of Iowa’s Studio Arts building. The Rube-Goldberg-esque contraption Hoeks designed serves to siphon water from another studio into his—and to successfully dispose of the wastewater thereby generated. His studio’s need for water is increased by the fact that the nearest sink, […]
