The University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program will present a free public performance by the JACK Quartet at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, in Riverside Recital Hall on the UI campus. The concert, which will feature clarinetist Derek Bermel, is part of the JACK’s extended residency Oct. 6-13 at the UI School of Music.

Martine Bellen, Iris Marble Cushing, Magus Magnus, and Joshua Ware will read as part of the Furniture Press Books poetry tour at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8, at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

Eric Lundgren will read from his comic and existential novel "The Facades" at 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 7, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

The performing arts component of University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Project Art will present a chamber music performance by internationally renowned artists at noon Monday, Oct. 7, in the atrium of the John Colloton Pavilion at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. The performance is free and open to the public.

Several thousand people converged on Hubbard Park Sunday, Sept. 29th for the UI 23rd annual Celebrating Cultural Diversity Festival.

In his career as painting conservator, Barry Bauman has found everything from hidden signatures to entire paintings under other works of art. Those discoveries will be among the highlights of a lecture at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, in Room 240 of Art Building West on the UI campus.

The University of Iowa’s Hancher will present the Jerusalem Quartet, one of the world’s most respected string quartets, on Thursday, Oct. 10, at 7:30 p.m. at the Riverside Recital Hall in Iowa City.

University of Iowa Alumni Fellow Simone Ferro and Grant Wood Fellow Esther Baker-Tarpaga will join Department of Dance faculty in providing choreography for this year's Dance Gala, which runs Oct. 17-26.

The University of Iowa Center for New Music, housed within the UI School of Music, will present a free performance by guest clarinetist Michael Norsworthy (with David Gompper, UI professor of composition) at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13, in Riverside Recital Hall on the UI campus.

The University of Iowa campus will be full of activities next week when UI Homecoming 2013 festivities begin on Sunday, Sept. 29. This year's theme is "Countless Hawkeyes, One Spirit."

The University of Iowa School of Art and Art History will host “Advancing the Iowa Idea: A Program Celebrating the Beginning of Construction,” from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27, in 240 Art Building West on the UI campus. The program will recognize individuals who have contributed to the design and planning for the new Visual Arts Building.

In advance of the 2013-14 University of Iowa Theatre Mainstage season's opening production, "Water by the Spoonful," dramaturg Madison Colquette speaks with the playwright and the UI performance's director about the captivating stories found within this Pulitzer-winning work for the stage.