Arts & Culture

This year, the state of Illinois was recognized by the Springfield Historic Sites Commission with the 2021 Historic Preservation Award to honor and recognize efforts to preserve historical buildings in downtown Springfield.

The state has made a strong effort to preserve many old buildings in Springfield, including the Illinois State Armory, Old State Capitol dome, former State Journal Register building and the Chase/Marine building. This recognition comes as Central Management Services continues to optimize the state’s real estate portfolio and redevelop several properties for the state to use in the upcoming Capital Complex Master Plan for 2050.

A beloved annual celebration in Bloomington will reach a lofty milestone in July. The David Davis Mansion State Historic Site will be celebrating the 25th year of its Glorious Garden Festival on July 16-17.

First hosted in 1997, the Glorious Garden Festival brings local residents and tourists to the Bloomington-Normal community to take part in garden-themed events and to share gardening knowledge.

Located in Monticello in the heart of Illinois, Allerton Park and Retreat Center contains 1,500 acres of woodland and prairie areas, a 10-acre meadow, sculpture gardens, hiking trails and a historic mansion. Originally built as a private residence by artist and philanthropist Robert Allerton in 1900, the park was donated by Allerton to the University of Illinois in 1946.

Robert Allerton was born in Chicago on March 20, 1873. As a young man, he decided to forego entering his father’s business in farming and banking, instead opting to dedicate his life to the pursuit of art. Eventually, he took over the management of some of his father’s holdings in Monticello, naming the area “The Farms.”

Happy Pride Month! June is a month-long celebration of LGBTQIA+ culture and their contributions throughout history. Illinois has a notable history of celebrating pride, particularly in Chicago.

A year after the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York, inspired by what occurred there, activists in Chicago put on the first ever major pride event in the city. A lot of Pride events, including the ones in Chicago, initially started out as protests with LGBTQIA+ people fighting for equality. The pride events in Chicago have grown over the years, going from hundreds of attendees to hundreds of thousands of attendees.

Sophia Byrd, a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been nominated for two Grammy Awards.

Byrd had the opportunity to sing in a professional oratorio as a college freshman and is now studying lyric theatre. She was one of six vocalists who performed in “Place,” a 2018 work that explores the effects of gentrification in a Brooklyn neighborhood. “Place” is nominated for best chamber music/small ensemble performance and best contemporary classical composition.