Food has been on Lori Larusso’s mind since she was a child. The award-winning Louisville artist has spent 20 years creating paintings and inst…

What a 2020 it could have been: “Amadeus” at the University of South Carolina, the local premieres of big Broadway musicals such as “A Gentlem…

Frequent flooding helps to create a forest rich with biodiversity, and Stuart, an acclaimed experimental music composer and percussionist, aimed to put people right in the middle of the park.

Two institutional arts venues will reopen this weekend, and both have one big thing in common: They make money off people paying to see things.

The road may have been a little rocky, but Columbia’s two professional ballet companies are back in action, returning to the Koger Center for the Arts with back-to-back productions of “The Nutcracker” just in time for Christmas.

Karen Magradey, assistant director at the Koger Center for the Arts, reflected on normal days during a recent call with a subscriber to the ve…

Wim Roefs, the owner of if ART Gallery in the Vista, is all about getting people to look at art in different ways.

There may be quarantines and social distancing, curfews, mandatory mask limits and occupancy limits, but an audacious collective of dancers at…

The museum has kicked into high gear to convert many of its lecture and educational offerings to the web, striving to provide the same community-focused programming it did before COVID-19.

One by one, theater groups are getting back to doing what they do best: staging live theater.

There’s something oddly fitting about the prospect of watching a Columbia Baroque performance from your living room. The group’s raison d'être…

The theater, recognized as the country’s longest continually running community theater organization, managed to weather the unexpected halt to its 101st season.

Tapp’s, a nonprofit home for artist entrepreneurs, is very much concerned with finding ways to support creatives during this tumultuous time.

The plans include prominent groups like the Columbia Children’s Theatre and The Jasper Project, and the involvement of a stalwart local artist like theater fixture Darion McCloud.

With October and the Halloween season comes a whole new set of events figuring out how to handle life during COVID-19.

You’ll see several different artistic styles in “Through it All I RISE!” Columbia artist Keith Tolen’s new exhibition at the Arts Center of Kershaw County.

Until last weekend, I hadn’t seen a concert since March 10.

Most years, Mike Harley wouldn’t program two concerts at outside venues. He certainly wouldn’t plan a virtual broadcast to fill one of his dates.

One of the most striking paintings Joel Cothran has created is also the simplest. With a jagged spray of purple text across a plain white canv…

Free Times talked with Dr. Anthony Alberg about whether some concerts and other events with a live audience might be safer than others right now, seeking to give readers a better idea if they should stay or go depending on what situation they walk into.

On the surface, Party Hard is a simple tale about a young man named coming back to his hometown for a night of drinking with old friends. But …

Amid waves of protests against systemic racism and police brutality this summer, cities around the country began commissioning and installing …

The title of Valerie Zimany’s new exhibition at 701 Center for Contemporary Art is And I Was Covered in Blossoms, an apt description.

The selfie is not a new concept. It’s just that, in the days before cellphone cameras — or even cameras in general — it was called something d…

When Columbia artist Keith Tolen agreed to create a new mural for the City of Columbia, he knew the job would come with some unique physical c…

Not long after Columbia artist McClellan Douglas began creating a massive mural, he received an ugly anonymous review.

There could hardly be a more perfect time for the Columbia Museum of Art’s new exhibit Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite…

It can be difficult to speak confidently about any cultural institution’s future in the best of times, let alone amid a global pandemic. But A…

Even before the coronavirus came along, 2020 was an uncertain year for The Jasper Project. It started the year without a home, displaced when …

A short-lived Columbia blog that allowed anonymous accusations of sexual misconduct led to the departure of a co-owner from a West Columbia co…

Wendyth Wells, the owner of City Art, had a pretty hectic Saturday on May 30. The venerable downtown Columbia art gallery and art supply store…

At the beginning of June, the South Carolina State Museum reopened its doors for the first time since closing in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Within days of the world seeing video of George Floyd being killed during a brutal altercation with police officers in Minneapolis, Minn., Col…

With their ability to hold fundraising events limited by the COVID-19 pandemic, many Columbia nonprofits are looking at a pretty dismal 2020. …

In an open letter posted to social media, two black former employees accuse the organization that oversees the arthouse Nickelodeon Theatre of…