Rock Candy

The Arkansas Arts Center has a new name to go with its $142 million new building in MacArthur Park. We talked with Executive Director Victoria Ramirez about the renovation and what it means for art in Arkansas. 

Churchill’s book arrives a year and change after his death, in a dispiriting moment. The foreword, written by his youngest son Hugh and his brother Larry, notes that liberal arts deliberation is sorely lacking through the pandemic as we struggle to balance public health services and the needs of the economy.

Weinheimer, along with bassist Chris Michaels and guitarist Charles Wyrick, will play a set on the front porch of Control Records in the Hillcrest area of Little Rock, 6 p.m. Thursday, March 4 for the neighborhood’s monthly Shop and Sip happy hour hang.

"Minari," Arkansas native Lee Isaac Chung's semi-autobiographical film about his childhood in rural Washington County, took home the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture in a Foreign Language.

Mutants of the Monster, ASO's "Serenades," a Dreamland Shakedown and more this weekend.

“The Chariot” is writer/director Adam Sigal’s third feature film. “It's a science-fiction dark comedy,” Sigal told us. “It’s a very strange, sort of quirky David Lynch-esque film.”

Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Duke Ellington have all performed in the Dreamland Ballroom at Taborian Hall, which has stood at Little Rock’s West Ninth St. for over 100 years now, and this weekend, a lineup of local Black performers hits the stage for “The Dreamland Shakedown: A Celebration of Vintage Black Art.”

Julia Roberts will star as Martha Mitchell, the Pine Bluff native who was married to John Mitchell, attorney general under President Richard Nixon, in a forthcoming Starz adaptation of Slate's "Slow Burn" podcast.

We talk with scholar and artist Dr. Nell Irvin Painter ahead of her discussion tonight as part of CALS' Six Bridges Book Festival.

Sundance darling "Minari," set in rural Arkansas, scored 10 nominations from the Critic's Choice Awards. Arkansas Cinema Society hosts a virtual screening of the film Thursday night.

Up at the the Windgate Center of Art and Design at UA Little Rock from Feb. 22-March 19 is "Sompasauna," an exhibit from UA Little Rock alum and adjunct photography professor Dylan Yarbrough.

The Symphony of Northwest Arkansas will record a quintet by Little Rock-born composer Florence Price (1887-1953) in the Great Hall at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, to be released Feb. 25 as a virtual concert. 

It's official. "Minari," the acclaimed new film from director and former Arkansas resident Lee Isaac Chung, is nominated for a Golden Globe — in the Foreign Language category. And for many, that's a problem.

A TV adaptation of Hot Springs native David Hill's "The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice" is in the works.

Writer Kiese Laymon (“Heavy: An American Memoir,” “How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America,” “Long Division”) will give a public reading via Zoom as an artist-in-residence at the University of Central Arkansas Feb. 23-24. 

Central High School student Nia Renée appears on the premiere episode of “American Idol,” to air 7 p.m., Feb. 14 on ABC. 

We reached Chung in South Pasadena, Calif., via Zoom to compare notes on Ozarks living (“I don’t miss the ticks”), to discuss the merits of a family as a protagonist and to jinx him by invoking the work of noted Oscar hoarder Bong Joon-ho.

Fortunately for Central Arkansans, Mosaic Templars Cultural Center does the work of highlighting Black history year-round, and February is as good a time to visit as any, virtually or in person.

Symone, the first Arkansas queen to strut the ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ runway, is still finding ways to be free. 

Four hundred and sixty-seven hours of stitching went into Crystal C. Mercer’s new children’s book, “From Cotton to Silk: The Magic of Black Hair," out on Et Alia Press March 20.