A special presentation in the 3rd Thursdays at Hoover's Presidential Library & Museum series – this one taking place on the 4th Thursday of the month – the Davenport Public Library hosts the virtual program Behind the Scenes at 'Firing Line' on February 25, with Herbert Hoover's great-grandchild Margaret Hoover detailing how she was able to reboot the popular PBS series and pull in amazing guests to interview.

Hosting an original exhibition displayed in conjunction with the Figge Art Museum's For America: 200 Years of Painting from the National Academy of Design, Davenport's Putnam Museum & Science Center will, through September 4, offer a fascinating exploration into historic portraiture with the homegrown exhibit Faces of the Past.

The fascinating role of portraiture throughout art history will be the subject of a virtual Figge Art Museum presentation on February 25, with American Artists' Self-Portraits Then & Now serving as a companion event – one hosted by recently retired Chief Curator Emerita Brandon Brame Fortune of the National Portrait Gallery – to the Figge's eagerly awaited exhibition For America: 200 Years of Painting from the National Academy of Design.

Always an eagerly awaited series at the Figge Art Museum, the latest incarnation of Young Artists at the Figge will be on display through May 16, with the Davenport venue again celebrating the accomplishments of budding creative talents of local elementary art students whose works will be showcased in six individual exhibits and their accompanying Recognition Days.

The completist in me is so delighted to be catching four new movies – three of them recently nominated for Golden Globe and/or Screen Actors Guild Awards – that I don't even mind that the collective titles are tackling subjects such as murder, suicide, imprisonment, torture, spousal abuse, a debilitating stroke, and temperatures even colder than the ones we're currently facing. Okay: I mind a little.

It took me, like, a minute into the first track on Iowa City experimental rock crew Nraakors’ album Hoppel Poppel to decide that I frickin' love this band.

If you know the River Cities' Reader, you know Amy Alkon. Or at least you think you do.

In the wake of Princess Dismal, December 2020’s album’s worth of outtakes that proved just as compelling as his typical “proper” album material, Rock Island’s resident drone kingpin and improbably prolific composer Terry Skaggs hovers back into view with a new batch of extended ambient meditations titled My Atlas of Never-Taken Paths.

Late in 2019, Iowa City's ZUUL dragged a large pile of small amps into a warehouse in Washington, Iowa. Even with a half-dozen amplifiers, an organ, drums, and sundry recording equipment, the three-piece barely took up more than a corner. The intention: to capture the minimalist intensity of their howling noise rock in a cavernous empty space, with microphones placed at intervals near and far to catch it all.