Join us as the Rochester Public Library is brings their well-loved Storytime to the History Center! After enjoying some fun and engaging stories, stick around for a kid-friendly and free tour of the History Center Museum and discover fascinating stories from Rochester and Olmsted County’s past. Bring the whole family for a relaxed and fun morning of stories and history!
Break out the mittens and don your coziest sweater! At Mill City Museum, we're embracing winter in the Baking Lab with a hot chocolate brownie demo and the book Bring Warm Clothes, a collection of photos and letters assembled by Peg Meier, formerly of the Star Tribune. Included with site admission.
A gust of icy wind changes everything! Follow St. Paul’s own Clarence “Cap” Wigington and his wife Viola as their Winter Carnival ice palace design plunges them into the magical realm of King Boreas. They’ll encounter iconic Minnesota figures, from bygone poets to racing legends, all woven into the vibrant tapestry of the Carnival’s myth and history. Discover the strange, wonderful heart of a tradition built on resilience, imagination, and the enduring spirit of our snowy state.
Northern Shores features the talented duo of Danny Diamond on fiddle and Brian Miller on guitar, bouzouki, and vocals. This collaboration unites two of the finest Irish folk and traditional musicians in the United States. Belfast-born Diamond delivers music that is profoundly connected to the north of Ireland, highlighting a unique and eclectic repertoire, infused with rhythm and sensitivity. Miller, hailing from Minnesota, immerses himself in his local roots to bring back to life Irish-American folk songs from the Great Lakes.
The Coast & the Sea: Marine and Maritime Art in America is a traveling exhibition organized by the The New York Historical featuring 49 paintings and 10 maritime objects from their immense collection relating the story of early American culture and history. The exhibition is organized into several chronological themes exploring America’s relationship with water.
Geo Rutherford is a Sauk City, Wisconsin based artist, author, educator and a social media sensation with a keen interest in science, natural history, and telling stories about water. On display are original illustrations from her New York Times best selling book Spooky Lakes (2024) and from her forthcoming book Spooky Rivers (2026). Her illustrations explore fascinating, quirky, and sometimes eerie stories about the Great Lakes and other fascinating bodies of water around the world.
Barbara McIlrath travels along the Mississippi River between her farm studio in Pepin, Wisconsin and her house in St. Paul, Minnesota. The seasonal color changes of the Driftless Region inspire her paintings and drawings.
McIlrath is particularly drawn to the shoreline of Lake Pepin in the historic Village of Old Frontenac, Minnesota, as well as the prairie surrounding her farm in Hicks Valley, near the Village of Pepin.
Using the idea of a river town as a starting point, Andy DuCett will create multiple new site-specific installations for the Minnesota Marine Art Museum that start in the galleries but extend beyond the walls of the museum and into Winona, his hometown community, in the exhibition Home(town). Working across many artistic mediums, DuCett has a long history of fusing institutional presentation methods and languages with hyper-local visual and cultural vernacular.
Gordon Coons is an artist and educator originally from Wisconsin and now living and working in Minneapolis, MN and is an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribe of Wisconsin. Coons is a self-taught artist working in a variety of mediums including linoleum block prints, paintings, pen and ink drawings, sculpture, and prints created from cedar smoke and gold leaf. His colorful works are considered to be in the Woodland Style of art inspired by regional Ojibwa rock paintings, petroglyphs, historic birch bark drawings, and oral traditions.
Myths & Legends of Minnesota: An Exhibition of the Minnesota Plein Air Collective seeks to celebrate Minnesota’s rich tapestry of folklore, cultural heritage, and oral tradition as expressed through the landscape, focusing on the lakes, rivers and other waterways of Minnesota. Artists in this group exhibition aim to interpret legends, tall tales, folklore, or personal narratives through visual art created in direct engagement with the natural environment and aquatic ecosystems of Minnesota.
