Davenport, Iowa (March 28, 2013) - PechaKucha Night builds at the Figge Art Museum this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the museum lobby.

PechaKucha Nights are informal and fun gatherings where creative people get together and share their ideas, works, thoughts, or hobbies in the PechaKucha 20x20 format. This format allows presenters to show 20 slides for 20 seconds each (six minutes and 40 seconds in total) to keep presentations concise and fast-paced. The images advance automatically and the presenter talks along to the images.

PechaKucha Night this Thursday will feature eight presenters including Vincent Briley, Assistant Dean of Academic Advising & Testing at Eastern Iowa Community Colleges; Tony Singh, Senior Vice President of The Singh Group at Merrill Lynch; Diane Franken, artsBASICS Co-Project Director at Davenport Community Schools; Ann Love, Director of Museum Studies at Western Illinois University-Quad Cities;  local artists Matt Pulford and Jeff Tady; local artist and financial advisor of The Singh Group at Merril Lynch, Thomas Behne; and Bruce Walters, professor of art at Western Illinois University.

Devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture, the first PechaKucha Night was held in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network and show their work in public. Now, they are held in over 600 cities around the world by a city organizer. According to Figge Director of Development Raelene Pullen, "Our first night was a great success. We will continue to organize this vent on the last Thursday of each month."

Museum admission is free on Thursday evenings and this event will include free light appetizers beginning at 5:30 p.m. along with a cash bar. Thursday is the first of many PechaKucha Nights the Figge will be hosting. For more information on future dates, visit www.figgeartmuseum.org. If you are interested in becoming a presenter please contact Melissa Hueting at mhueting@figgeartmuseum.org.

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The Buffalo Bill Museum's Building Addition Kickoff Fundraiser Dinner wil be held on Wednesday, April 3, 2013 at the Crane & Pelican Cafe.

5:00pm - 6:00pm:  Social Hour (Appetizers and cash bar)

6:15pm:  Dinner Served (choose from Cody Road Bourbon Chicken, Sawyer Farms Roast Beef, or Sabina Dawley's Spring Quiche

Desserts by 12th Street Sweets, Davenport

$35 per person in advance; $40 per person at the door.

Limited Seating - Will Sell Out Early - Don't Wait

For tickets, send payment NLT March 30th with dinner choice to the Buffalo Bill Museum, Box 284, LeClaire IA 52753 or call the museum at 563-289-5580.

Captain and Sabina Dawley built the Dawley House (now known at the Crane & Pelican Cafe) in 1851.  They raised nine children in the house.  The Captain and Sabina will be joined by two of their daughters and other LeClaire residents when they welcome you to their home on April 3rd.

The public is invited to join the Muscatine Art Center in welcoming Carol Ehlers, art history speaker, as she presents a 45 minute lecture on Edgar Degas's influence on Pablo Picasso. The lecture will take place Thursday, March 28 at 5:30 pm in the Muscatine Art Center's Music Room. Admission is free.

When Pablo Picasso moved to the Montmartre district in Paris in 1904, he lived and worked in the same neighborhood as Edgar Degas. The pair had several friends in common, used the same models and shared Ambrose Vollard as their art dealer, but it is unlikely that the two ever met. Degas was from an earlier era (he was 47 years older than Picasso) and was classically educated and from a well-off family, but was famously aloof. Picasso on the other hand was struggling, impoverished and frequented the brothels, cafes and nightclubs so commonly seen in both of their works.

Despite their differences in age, temperament and background, Picasso had an enduring fascination with Degas. Throughout his long career, Picasso would produce works of art in response to what his artistic predecessors created, often "quoting" their compositions. Picasso is said to have observed that "good artists copy; great artists steal." Thus was his relationship with Degas. Picasso's early compositions were wrought with scenes of cabarets and cafes, portraits, women bathing, and ballet dancers; the same subjects that had come to define Degas's iconic works.

Pablo Picasso Looks at Edgar Degas explores Picasso's lifelong fascination with Degas's art and personality, while also shedding light on the development of twentieth-century modernism.

In 1992 the Muscatine Art Center's collections were significantly enriched by a gift of twenty-seven works of art from the estate of Mary Musser Gilmore in honor of her parents, Richard Drew Musser and Sarah Walker Musser. Represented in this collection are works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Degas, Boudin, Chagall, Renoir, and other European artists. These pieces are on permanent display in the Laura Musser Mansion.