Arts and Culture

MPR News has you covered with news and stories about local art and culture happenings across Minnesota.

Art Hounds: Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what's exciting in local art. You can explore arts events here, or become an Art Hound today.

Art Reviews: Our arts team offers insight on the latest in theater, music, visual arts and more. We explore the breadth of creativity and innovation found throughout Minnesota, offering audiences a deeper understanding of the works and artists shaping our cultural landscape. Read more here.

Art Friend: Everyone needs an art friend. Art Friend is a new segment with our arts team. Art spaces can feel exclusive and art can be confusing, obtuse, and even boring. But, especially with the right context, everyone can be a critic. So let us be your guide- your Art Friend. Listen or read Art Friend stories here.

Our arts coverage is made possible in part by the Minnesota Legacy Amendment's Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.

Singer Brandi Carlile talks ambition, avoidance and finally finding her place
The six-time Grammy winner got her start as a kid, singing backup for an Elvis impersonator. Her new memoir, “Broken Horses,” is about her early life and the family she's built.
Prayer vigil planned for stricken rapper DMX
A prayer vigil was planned for Monday outside the suburban New York hospital where rapper DMX remained on life support Sunday following a heart attack.
'We will never break': In Iraq, a Yazidi women's choir keeps ancient music alive
Women from Iraq's Yazidi minority get together to perform centuries-old sacred songs. They've survived captivity by ISIS, and loved ones' deaths. "We are here to send a message to ISIS," says one choir member, "that we will never break."
Old ways cradle a new life in 'I Sang You Down from the Stars'
Caldecott Medal-winning artist Michaela Goade's Tlingit heritage her illustrations for “I Sang You Down From the Stars,” about a woman following Indigenous customs as she prepares for motherhood.
SW Minn. wind-solar hybrid project brings renewable hope, cultural concerns
A possible hurdle, as the project aims for regulatory approval, is its proximity to the Jeffers Petroglyphs historical and cultural site in Comfrey — home to an estimated 5,000 sacred rock carvings, made over the span of 7,000 years on an outcropping of Sioux quartzite. Today, it remains an active ceremonial site for Native American prayers and ceremony.
‘The Year of the Plague’: The pandemic, through a storyteller’s eyes
Ojibwe storyteller Anne Dunn has been totally alone in a little house on the Leech Lake Reservation for more than a year, wondering — as storytellers do — how to weave the pandemic into a coherent narrative.
Talking Volumes: A conversation with author Naima Coster
Novelist Naima Coster joined MPR News for a wide-ranging conversation on everything from integration to parenting to books that got her through the pandemic.
Hunter Biden's memoir 'Beautiful Things' seeks to tell just where he's been
The account by the president's younger son is at times a harrowing journey; in the end, if not for forgiveness or sympathy, it may be about making a stand and taking whatever place he can occupy.