By Jacqueline Kehoe for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Yerkes Observatory, in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, calls itself a 125-year-old start-up. Widely regarded as America’s most historic observatory—names like Carl Sagan, Edwin Hubble, and Nancy Grace Roman once dashing through its hallways—Yerkes seemed destined to become a dusty museum. And then, growing like a nascent star, it found a second life.

“The University of Chicago couldn’t make this facility work exclusively as an observatory,” says Walt Chadick, Yerkes’ director of programs and external affairs. Observatories are in the sky, or on mountaintops in faraway lands—not subject to the light pollution of Chicago. When the Yerkes Future Foundation took over in 2020, they needed a new plan. “We realized we needed to branch out beyond what astronomy is to what people make based on astronomy,” says Chadick. That’s how we could make an impact on our community.”

Reopened in May 2022, Yerkes has already put its mission to work: Poet laureates, Grammy winners, NASA sculptors, Pulitzer-winning authors, and composers and artists across nearly every genre have gathered here to be inspired by astronomy. The result? Ideas as big as the cosmos.

Prior to the University of Chicago handing over the reins to the Yerkes Future Foundation, the aging facility was slowly becoming an archaeological site. “They had the occasional Saturday tour,” explains Dr. Amanda Bauer, deputy director and Yerkes’ head of science and education. “They ran summer camps and had a bunch of 3D printers—but it was more of a museum as opposed to whatever you call what we are now.” 

When pressed, Bauer calls Yerkes a “science destination.” She quickly adds caveats: the history, the art, the architecture, and the landscape—Yerkes is an Olmsted site and an accredited arboretum.

Those caveats have served as Yerkes’ artistic compass: US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith read “Life on Mars” under the gaze of the Great Refractor, the largest refracting telescope in the world; 30 musicians, led by Grammy Award-winning ensemble Eighth Blackbird, composed and performed new works based on star images and plates; Ashley Zelinskie, the official sculptor for NASA, created a custom work evoking light bending through spacetime, infused with nods to Yerkes’ historic details; and the world’s largest glass tree, blown onsite, marked Christmas. “Connecting our material to art—we’ve got the largest glass lens used for astronomy, 180,000 glass plates—that’s the through line for all of these cross-pollinated, big ideas,” says Bauer. “That’s the sort of thing we’re doing here.”

In 2024, the Blackbird Creative Lab is back alongside more summer events, from a puppet show directed by Ann Hamilton, a visual artist known for her large-scale multimedia installations, to a night with Jonathan Bailey Holland, dean of music at Northwestern University. Artists “go down that road of what is the science of music and art,” says Chadick, “using old astronomy equipment, using books and our plate collection to inform composition. We keep astronomy at our core, and then we bridge-build from there.”


Jacqueline Kehoe wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


get more stories like this via email

By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Poetry really is everywhere—in love, in everyday language, in life lessons—and sidewalks across the Midwest are proving it. 

Head down a given street in certain Midwestern cities and you’ll come across (and maybe even step on or roll over) poems. 

Sidewalk poetry programs have risen across the region, stemming from an initiative started in St. Paul, Minnesota by prolific behavioral artist Marcus Young 楊墨 back in 2008. It was the first sidewalk poetry program in the country, inspired by sidewalk contractor stamps. 

“If you can print that in the sidewalks, can you print other things like poems?” he remembers thinking. “It all goes back to our universal desire that when we see wet concrete, we want to put our finger in it and just mark that, ‘I was here.’”

Public Art St. Paul’s Sidewalk Poetry “allows city residents to claim the sidewalks as their book pages” every spring when the public works department repairs damaged pavement. 

The premise: Invite poets to send in short poems in Dakota, English, Hmong, Somali, and Spanish; choose a handful; create stamps; apply to wet concrete.

“It has changed a sidewalk repair program and turned it into a publishing force,” Young says. 

Since the program began, it has stamped over 1,200 poems—enough for everyone living in St. Paul to walk to a sidewalk poem in under 10 minutes.

A four-hour drive east lands you in Appleton, Wisconsin, with its own program inspired by St. Paul’s. The city announced five poetic winners just last week, after a community panel narrowed down submissions from nearly 100. 

“It’s a beautiful art form,” says librarian Peter Kotarba, who works with Appleton’s sidewalk poetry program. “Poetry, especially in sidewalk poetry, is permission. It’s giving people permission to feel maybe what’s in that poem, but also permission to find their own avenue of expression.” 

Kotarba says he only sees programs like these growing. He’s planning to add QR codes on signs near the poems so passersby can hear audio recordings from the authors. And he recently fielded a call from a small city in northern California looking to start a similar effort. 

“It is an opportunity for the reader to step into someone else’s world,” or even just another state, he says, “to see reflections of themselves or others around them.”

Young says footpaths can be—and are—more than safe transportation venues. He wanted to instill “elevated, beguiling moments” in someone’s dog-walk or commute. 

“Bring a bit of reassurance, bring a bit of comfort, a bit of delight and mystery to your life,” Young says. “Your life is, yes, this ordinary moment, but it’s also this extraordinary moment.”


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.

By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mark Moran for Iowa News Service reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Inside a two-story, century-old brick fortress, sun shines through stained glass artworks. 

Music serenades down the hall; a koi pond will soon reflect a kaleidoscope of oranges and whites. Magic happens here. 

But it isn’t a fairytale—this is Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 

Eastern Iowa Arts Academy—a nonprofit offering accessible arts education—recently purchased this historic Arthur Elementary school, which was meant to be demolished.

“It’s like a whole new place … You can unwind. You can be creative. You can be exactly who you want to be here. It’s a safe place,” says Heather Wagner, the organization’s executive director.

The building’s plans include a hallway gallery, open studio spaces, and a community room with a food pantry, clothing closet, and mental health support. Folks can rent out instruments; there’s a sensory room, and a kitchen and gym rental. 

Students can sign up for band practice, create in the community maker’s space, or record tracks at the studio.

Music as Healing

One of those students, Zoe Wolrab, is a high school senior involved in three rock bands through the academy. She sings and plays bass guitar, covering artists from Carol King to Toto.

“When I was 14, I was kind of struggling a lot, just focusing in school and wanting to go to school in the first place. And I was also struggling a lot mentally,” Wolrab says.

So their mom suggested getting involved with music. Joining after-school sessions at Eastern Iowa Arts Academy perhaps saved their life, says Wolrab.

“Music is what I want in my life now. This kind of helped me find my career path in the first place. I just want to keep doing this forever.”

The academy is open to students of all ages and abilities, who pay full or partial memberships up to $190 or so a year. By the next three years, organizers plan to have full ADA-accessible programming.

It’s for everybody—by everybody. 

“The whole community coming together is working … on making this the arts hub for this area,” Wagner says. 

Meeting a Creative Need 

When bringing folks back to the academy’s previous building after pandemic restrictions, the problem was clear: The demand was just too high. 

“They came back in droves,” Wagner says of the students. “The need for expression in the arts was huge.” 

Classes started racking up waiting lists and students wanted more private instrument lessons. The academy was running out of room. With the help of a cohort grant through the Iowa Arts Council, the team secured the school for $260K. 

The building, though largely untouched save some painting, has transformed into an arts refuge. Wagner says people can come just as they are: There’s no need to put on a mask, empty your wallets, or be uncomfortable.

She just wants people to feel restored, much like the building’s newfound purpose. 

“Art can do what it’s supposed to do. People can kind of bury themselves in the art,” Wagner says. “You can just heal. And that’s what it’s all about.”


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


get more stories like this via email

By Frankie (Amy) Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration

Search "St. Croix River Valley" online and you'll find competition for your current desktop background.

The waterway is a government-designated National Wild and Scenic River, with all its blues and picture-perfect hues. Scenic is an understatement. Living in the dual-state area, which is 30-some miles northeast of Minnesota's Twin Cities, is an artist colony of sorts (how could you not be artistically inspired by the views?).

Local arts organization ArtReach St. Croix is helping to connect them.

Art to Art

"Artists often work in isolation, especially in the semi-rural and rural space," says Heather Rutledge, ArtReach's executive director. "In the St. Croix Valley, the artists are not parading down the street, but one of the ways that we [connect them] is network building among the artists."

Spanning the final 60 miles of the lower St. Croix River in Wisconsin and Minnesota, ArtReach has identified 168 local creatives on its directory.

Beyond the interactive list, the Stillwater-based nonprofit heads a mobile art gallery (which often sets up in nearby state parks), an area arts event calendar, and shares artist resources for folks in the region. ArtReach also hosts art at its gallery and month-long NEA Big Read programs. The list truly goes on.

Distinct Community, Place

ArtReach's slogan is "art at every bend in the river"-and it means it.

"The artists are building these bridges across the river, and see this geography as meaningful. And these programs that ArtReach does reinforce that," Rutledge says.

Harnessing multiple counties, small towns, villages-and two states-into a connected art community is special, she says, especially considering the area's unique suburban-skirt flavor.

"[We're] in this liminal space between the metro and fully outstate rural spaces," Rutledge says.

"When I moved here, I thought how incredible it was to be in a space that's very close to the metro and yet a world away," she says. "The other day I moved an exhibition from the Somerset Library to the Osceola Library, and then I came back to Stillwater. And on that little loop, I saw three different bald eagles."

She says the area sees a big economic impact from the arts, too-measuring nearly $170 million in historic total and employing over 2,000 people in the valley in one year, according to a 2022 Americans for the Arts report.

Rutledge and the ArtReach team continue fostering what they love best (hint: it's art!). They continually work with local tourism departments and the National Park Service to set up programming. And "Poets of Place," the next mobile art gallery, is set for this summer.


Frankie (Amy) Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.


get more stories like this via email