Billy's Lighthouse

This small-town lakeside joint is quickly becoming a small-town lakeside dining destination. Billy’s dramatically upgraded its almost twenty-year-old self with the arrival of chef Casey Leick, formerly of the 510 Restaurant. While the classic prime rib dinner and Lighthouse burger remain on the menu, they’re now joined by sauteed calf’s liver with onions and smoked … Read more

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It’s been ten years since this Nobel laureate last published a work of fiction, so the arrival of the English translation of Memories of My Melancholy Whores qualifies as a major event—even though, at just more than one hundred pages, it’s more novella than novel. Still, after a bit of journalism and the obligatory stab … Read more

The Quiet Landscapes of William B. Post

In his mid-fifties, New York financier William B. Post developed a new hobby, photographing comely young Edwardian women primping and simpering in sentimental poses. He would have remained a dilettante had he not gone outside for a little fresh air. Post’s country place in Maine set him in the midst of a wild beauty and … Read more

What Is a Human, Anyway?

Adulthood is overrated in many ways, and that’s especially so in Istanbul, according to this comedy set in an apartment building full of nosy folks. There’s the six-year-old who doesn’t want to get circumcised. There’s the teenager who doesn’t want to join the military. And then there’s the poor guy who’s exiting his twenties, but … Read more

The Wizardry of Osmo

Over the summer, as a new orchestra season neared, Minnesota Orchestra Artistic Director Osmo Vänskä started cropping up with more frequency and in interesting places. He fell out of the Sunday New York Times, for example. His smiling face was spotted on a friend’s bookshelf, atop a collectors’ edition bobble-arm, and, in one colorful portrait … Read more

The Technology of Spirit

Offering perhaps conclusive proof that fewer Americans are reading these days, Best Buy’s health and wellness retail experiment, called Eq-Life, will soon occupy the space vacated by Grand Avenue’s now defunct independent bookstore, Bound to Be Read. It’s worth noting that about a mile down the street, the space left open by Ruminator’s closure is … Read more

Afrofuturism

This ambitious and high-concept show has twenty-eight artists considering the future of black culture. From Sun Ra’s cosmic jazz to Brother From Another Planet to DJ Spooky’s book Rhythm Science, the notion of a rising black culture that blends art and technology is nothing new. But the varied film, sound, collage, and multimedia works housed … Read more

Mass Transit: Recent work by Shawn McNulty and Dave Whannel

Getting around in the city can be intense, whether you’re swerving on your bike to avoid oblivious pedestrians, crammed into a crowded bus at rush hour, or squeezing past that bus in a car. The crush can be oppressive, but it can also have moments of hectic beauty; the latter is what inspires Shawn McNulty … Read more

House of Oracles: A Huang Yong Ping Retrospective

Huang Yong Ping is a perfect choice for the Walker’s first full-scale retrospective since its reopening last spring. While he’s known within the global contemporary art firmament, this exhibition will expose his work to more of us regular folks–and thus add him to the lengthy roster of international artists (think Rirkrit Tiravanija, Krystof Wodiczko, Fischli … Read more

Tom Huck: The Bloody Bucket

The cringe-inducing title of this show is borrowed from the name of a bar, one that was the center of a peculiar sort of mayhem in mid-century rural Missouri. From 1948 to 1951, the regulars at the Bloody Bucket included a flood of World War II veterans who continued to live out the violence they’d … Read more