On May 5, Figge Art Museum visitors are invited to experience the landmark 10th season of the Peabody Award-winning Art:21 – Art in the 21st Century, the longest-running television series on contemporary art, in a screening featuring one collective and 12 individual artists – among them photographer Richard Misrach, whose work is currently on view in the Davenport venue's Border Cantos / Sonic Borders exhibit.

An eagerly awaited springtime event taking place over Mother's Day weekend in Davenport's spacious Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds, the 2022 Beaux Arts Spring Fair will treat visitors to an outdoor celebration of visual arts and fine crafts on May 7 and 8, with the annual event featuring food, live music, children's activities, and works for sale by nearly 100 artists and Midwestern vendors.

With the venue presenting its first exhibition of visual art since 2020, Rock Island's Rozz-Tox houses a collection of colorful and evocative new and small paintings in Leslie Bell: Little Theaters, an exhibit (on display through May 29) boasting the talents of the beloved, retired professor of art at Davenport's St. Ambrose University.

For those seeking a change from the traditional landscape of the Quad Cities, Bettendorf's Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy will, through June 30, house a representational exhibition of water, sky, volcanic rock, and white structures in It's All Greek to Me: Island Impressions by Robert Zeidler, a collection of never-before-seen works inspired by the artist's recent travels to Greece and the Aegean Sea.

A special viewing of one of the cinematic works in this year's Rock Island Art Guild Fine Arts Exhibition, the 20-minute performance piece Impermanence will be screened in the Figge Art Museum's John Deere Auditorium on April 28, Daniel Fine's and Dana Keeton's work a combination of live mandala creation, video projection, real-time video, and music by percussion ensemble Loop 2.4.3.

Held in conjunction with the Davenport venue's current exhibition Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee, the April 21 celebration Once Upon a Time in Woodstock will find the Figge Art Museum hosting an evening inspired by the community of artists active in Woodstock, New York, during the 1930s and 1940s, and boasting an art talk, an art activity, and even wardrobe art in the colorful outfits sure to be on display.

Photographs from more than 30 years ago can be viewed, through April 30, with modern relevance and poignancy at Davenport's Metropolitan Community Church of the Quad Cities, with photographer Jay Strickland showcasing images from overseas in his exhibition Our Move: Black & White Photographs of Ukraine (1988).

Dozens of works by gifted student artists will be on display at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center through April 28 in the expansive 45th Annual High School Art Invitational, a glorious celebration of local talent featuring the Quad Cities’ most promising artists expressing themselves through paintings, drawings, sculpture, metals, ceramics, photography, digital media and film.

An engaging series of quickfire presentations from a selection of artists will take place in the Figge Art Museum lobby on March 31 when the Davenport venue hosts an artist talk for the 2022 Rock Island Art Guild Fine Arts Exhibition, which currently houses 59 works – paintings, sculptures, installations, and more – by 50 artists living within a 200-mile radius of the Quad Cities.

Noted 20th-century photographer Aaron Siskind was quoted as saying, "Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever … . It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” This act of remembering will be on glorious display at the Figge Art Museum through July 3, with the Davenport venue housing works previously unseen in the Quad Cities via the arresting exhibition New Photography.

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