Treating viewers to a pair of free online screenings in honor of this year's Independence Day, Moline's Fourth Wall Films company and Davenport's Putnam Museum & Science Center team up to present the moving, historical, locally themed documentary A Bridge Too Far from Hero Street, its July 5 and 6 showings celebrating the life and experiences of a true war hero from Silvis, Illinois.

Accompanied by an entire repertoire of jazz standards and iconic pop hits, a 2005 graduate of Rock Island High School returns to the Quad Cities – performing for live audiences for the first time since March – in The Matt Barber Experience, the July 2 concert event at Davenport's Grape Life Wine Store & Lounge that finds Barber and his touring musicians performing classics from the five albums he has recorded since 2007.

Author Wallace Stegner wrote, “One cannot be pessimistic about the West … this is the native home of hope.” And images of hope – as well as images of struggle, endurance, triumph, and astonishing landscapes – will be on display at the Figge Art Museum from June 27 through October 4, with the Davenport venue hosting glorious, thought-provoking photographs in the new exhibition Magnetic West: The Enduring Allure of the American West.

Stunning and elegant works by a collection of more than 30 ceramic artists are set for public viewing at the recently re-opened Figge Art Museum, with the beauty of hand-crafted objects celebrated in About Face: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture, a new exhibition organized by the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts on display from June 20 through August 30.