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MN Shortlist is your weekly curated roundup of recommended events from MPR News, highlighting standout performances, exhibits and gatherings around the region.
Rachael Kilgour in Lake City
Sept. 5 — Minnesota folk singer-songwriter Rachael Kilgour’s new release “My Father Loved Me” is a raw love letter to those she’s lost. This album of belonging, inheritance and grief will be presented by Kilgour through a one-woman storytelling performance tonight.
The show is a mix of comedy, eulogy and concert. It navigates between the joy and heartbreak of her memories of her father and the stories she brings to life again. Kilgour is a 2025 McKnight Music Fellow. This performance in Lake City, Minn. kicks off her tour. (Anika Besst)
Minneapolis Monarch Festival
Sept. 6 — The 17th annual Minneapolis Monarch Festival (Festival de la Monarca) will fill the greens near the Lake Nokomis Community Center 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. The festival is a celebration of the 2,300-mile migration the butterflies make from Minnesota to Mexico and back, as well the connections between the neighboring countries.
Festival manager MaryLynn Pulscher told MPR News in 2023: “As Minnesotans, our job is to really keep monarchs healthy, and get them fattened up for that flight back to Mexico."
The free bilingual event is full of art, performances, educational activities and a kids’ butterfly costume parade. Local groups Mariachi Son de Morelos, Kalpulli KetzalCoatlicue, Ballet Folklorico Mexico Azteca and Tropical Zone Orchestra will perform on the main stage. (Alex V. Cipolle)
‘Re-Animator’ at MSP Film
Sept. 6 — It is officially meteorological fall, which means the spooky season has begun. To ring in the fright, MSP Film is hosting a showing of “Re-Animator” on Saturday. It’s a 1985 body horror film about a university student who doubles as a mad scientist trying to discover a serum to bring corpses to life.
This Frankensteinian plot entangles an evil professor and his army of zombie-like creatures and even includes an undead cat. Director Stuart Gordon created a creepy triumph that showcases career-defining performances from Barbara Crampton and Jeffrey Combs. This showing is part of MSP Film’s Midnight Mayhem series, where host Chaz Kangas makes it a night of community scaring with giveaways in the dark. (Anika Besst)
Walter Piehl Jr. retrospective
Sept. 6 — “I like art, rodeo and putting on paint, but not necessarily in that order.” That statement greets visitors on the webpage of artist and art educator Walter Piehl Jr.
Piehl was born in Marion, North Dakota, the son of a rodeo competitor and announcer, and studied art at Concordia College in Moorhead and the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum in Moorhead opens a retrospective Sept. 6 on Piehl’s decades of incredible, expressive paintings and prints that blend Western and contemporary sensibilities.
“I will always be a painter of Western Americana. The horse culture and the ranching culture were always so important to me — part of my everyday life. Pursuing art and pursuing that subject matter which was so important to me, naturally led me into all sorts of themes of the Wild West, of the tame West, of the rodeo and of the historic West,” Piehl said in an artist statement. (Alex V. Cipolle)
Magician Peter Antoniou at the Parkway
Sept. 7 — After delighting a nationwide audience during his run on America’s Got Talent, Peter Antoniou is bringing his charming brand of magic to Minneapolis for a show at the Parkway Theatre. Antoniou’s gentlemanly manner and professorial attire lend charm to a disarming performance style rooted in improv comedy. The show takes place Sunday at 7 p.m. (Jacob Aloi)
‘Big Fish’ at Lyric Arts
Through Sept. 28 — Based on the Tim Burton film of the same name, “Big Fish: the Musical” received mixed reviews when it premiered on Broadway in 2013. Since then, however, the show has enjoyed greater success at regional theater and high schools. For its fall offering, Lyric Arts in Anoka is producing the show that blends a simple narrative about the relationship between sons and fathers with magical realism.
The musical follows Will, a journalist on the brink of fatherhood, as he tries to make peace with his daydreamer father, who has always had a penchant for telling tall tales about his time on the road as a salesman. (Jacob Aloi)
‘Weaving Ancestry’
Through Oct. 9 — Martha Bird is a Minneapolis-based artist (and nurse!) who specializes in traditional and sculptural basketry using willow. The Nordic Center in Duluth will feature her work in the new exhibition “Weaving Ancestry,” which explores the Norwegian, Swedish and French cultural connections in her work.
“The artist in me wants to express; the nurse in me wants to encourage healing; and the truthteller wants to put form to difficult universal truths,” Bird said in an artist statement. (Alex V. Cipolle)
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