Thanks to all who submitted images for the 2024 Spring Photo Contest!

On June 15, 2002, at 10 o'clock on a Saturday morning, a crowd gathered for “Black Heroes Carved in Stone,” a ceremony held at Chippiannock Cemetery. They had convened to honor nine black soldiers who had volunteered to fight in the Civil War. The men had lain forgotten in unmarked graves until the cemetery’s office manager discovered their story while creating digital records from handwritten ledgers.

With their artistic creations elevating “those who have come before” whether in their subject matter, their artform’s technique, or even the way in which they speak about their work, a trio of gifted talents join forces for the latest exhibition at Rock Island's Quad City Arts Center, the venue's Brown, Murtha, & Vogel exhibition, on display through June 21, treating patrons to paintings by Julie Brown, quilts by Diane Murtha, and fiber art by Jeane Vogel.

On May 9, area art lovers are invited to celebrate the Figge Art Museum's popular 43rd Rock Island Art Guild Fine Arts Exhibition through a series of quickfire presentations from a selection of featured regional artists, the exhibit boasting 62 works - paintings, sculptures, installations, and more - by 42 artists living within a 200-mile radius of the Quad Cities.

A celebration of work completed by graduating seniors in the Department of Digital Art and Design, the DART Senior Thesis Art Show will be on display at the University of Dubuque's Bisignano Art Gallery through April 27, the exhibit boasting a variety of pieces in illustration, animation, digital painting, motion graphics, and digital artwork, and displaying the wide range of skills students cultivated during their time at UD.

2024 Reader Photo Contest Secret Records Transparent Promo Photo

With spring in the air, it's time again for the River Cities’ Reader's annual Spring Photo Contest!

For 2024, the three new categories for your submissions are: “Secret,” “Records,” and “Transparent.”

Entrants are welcome to interpret the categories however they wish.  Click photo or headline for full list of rules. 

New works by a pair of gifted Iowa artisans will be decorating the Quad City Arts International Airport Gallery through July 1, with thoughtful and arresting pieces in the Schafer & Rocca exhibit showcasing the talents of oil painter John Paul Schafer of Cedar Rapids and wall-sculpture artist Kimberlee Rocca of Solon.

On April 25, guests of Davenport's Figge Art Museum are invited to enjoy an early "Last Chance" exhibition tour for the venue's popular Peter Xiao: A Room That One Is In (And All Things In It), an installation of arresting paintings by our area's beloved, longtime Augustana College Professor of Art and the college's Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts.

An annual fine-art showcase involving students in the Department of Digital Art and Design at the University of Dubuque, The Edge Show is the latest exhibition at the institution's Bisignano Art Gallery, this celebration of dazzling young talent on display through April 10.

The newly created Davenport Municipal Art Gallery opened its doors to the public in October of 1925. Fourteen thousand people – a fifth of Davenport’s population – visited the gallery on West Fifth Street near Main in its first three months. Charles August Ficke’s initial gift of 270 traditional European, Asian, and Mexican paintings to the city of Davenport created the momentum and need for a municipal gallery, one of the earliest in America.

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