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.

Art Hounds: New play creates space for empathy, virtually
This week: the Empathy Project from Full Circle Theater, All My Relations Arts’ “Bring Her Home: Sacred Womxn of Resistance” exhibit, and Strike Theater’s One Minute Film Festival.
ChangeMakers: Marlena Myles, educating through art and innovation
Marlena Myles is a self-taught professional artist. Her art leverages technology to create immersive interaction that engages and educates people about the language, history and spirituality of her tribe, the Dakota people.
Lin Enger's new novel delves into truth, lies and the apocalypse
Lin Enger says his own obsession with the rapture developed over the years, as did a story he first set out to write three decades ago. “American Gospel” is set in the 1970s but has an eerie ring of today.
You don't have to like astrology to love 'Written In The Stars'
A free-spirited astrology blogger and a straitlaced insurance actuary agree to fake a relationship — and then really fall for each other in Alexandria Bellefleur's charming queer romance.
Here's the deal, folks: A POTUS impression is harder than it looks
As Jim Carrey works on his best Joe Biden for “Saturday Night Live,” we ask other impressionists how they've done it. Darrell Hammond says he wishes people understood how tough impressions really are.
Light punctures the darkness in 'One Night Two Souls Went Walking'
Ellen Cooney's new novel follows an unnamed hospital chaplain on her rounds, as she ministers to patients and grapples with her own internal questions. It's a quiet, inward-looking but hopeful story.
Ask a Bookseller: 'A heaping helping of joy'
Dionne Sims, owner of the new pop-up store Black Garnet Books in Minneapolis, recommended a book that’s been bringing her joy lately: "#Very Fat #Very Brave” by comedian Nicole Byer.
A pandemic winter is a great time to start a new hobby
Three people who have turned hobbies and crafts into careers joined host Angela Davis to talk about the benefits of indoor hobbies and how to get started if you want to try something new.