David Luhrssen

The Haggerty Museum of Art is a gem tucked away on the Marquette University campus, an institution with an impressive trove of art in its vaults and an admirably creative tradition of programming.

The timing couldn’t be better. All 65 episodes from the award-winning series “Veep” (65 Emmys?) has been released weeks before Election Day.

With Anything is Good, essayist, memoirist and novelist Fred Waitzkin melds all three of his literary pursuits into a seamless composition. The story has two narrators, a successful writer who speaks Waitzkin’s parts and his childhood friend, the brilliant but socially awkward Ralph Silverman (based on a real person known to the author). In Anything is Good

Maybe it’s because anticipation for a new civil war is in the air? Books on the American Civil War have been rolling off the presses faster than reviewers can read them. One of the latest, Chorus of the Union, focuses on a pair of politicians prominent in the lead up to war, Abraham Lincoln, winner of the 1860 presidential election, and his rival, Stephen Douglas.

Armenian wines, winning awards and gaining attention around the world, will be featured at a local wine tasting event.

Ralph Fiennes appears as the Dean of the College of Cardinals, tasked to oversee the new pontiff’s election in ‘Conclave’.

Milwaukee Opera Theatre and Early Music Now perform Handel’s Alcina at Dandy on the West Side.

Matthew Ferrence isn’t the first writer to bemoan the loss of small-town America to the GOP. However, he actually tried to do something about it. Ferrence ran for the legislature as a Democrat in Crawford County, PA, against a Republican incumbent. He lost by a wide margin, but his dispiriting candidacy inspired I Hate it Here, Please Vote for Me.

The December release of A Complete Unknown staring Timothée Chalamet as young Bob Dylan provides another opportunity to consider the importance of this enigmatic embodiment of American music. Dylan’s influence in the ‘60s crossed oceans and changed the prevailing currents of music. The interest surrounding A Complete Unknown is an excellent backdrop for the release of a quirky, enlightening tribute, He Took Us by Storm.

In ‘Here’, based on Richard McGuire’s graphic novel by Richard McGuire, director Robert Zemeckis employs a static camera, placed in what becomes a large living room, to depict 104 minutes of action occurring over thousands of years.