The third Beacon Festival bursts forth from its previous one-week bounds to shower you with a month’s worth of picnics, dinners, lectures, gospel music and lunch music, tours, readings, acrobatics, vaudeville, dancing dogs, Lamella roofs and Victorian funerary art, a party with the composer and the stars of a brand new opera and a trip back 160 years for a re-examination of the Dred Scott Case, presented at the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis.
Browse through and choose the events you want to attend. You can designate your choices online or by mail. Whichever way you choose, you’re walking through a magic portal to the promise of a cultural adventure that is the Beacon Festival.
All tickets are first come, first served. There are no refunds. Click here to register for any of these feasts or fests you wish.
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(This event has been sold out) Due to overwhelming demand, we've scheduled another Kaplan brunch! When Marty Kaplan was operating Marty’s Baking, his cakes, pies and cookies were St. Louis favorites, and Sunday brunches in the bakery kitchen became a beloved institution.
Marty Kaplan and partner Bob Duffy look forward to showing off their new kitchen and revisiting some of the favorite dishes and desserts that were, once upon a bakery, the talk of the town. (This feast is sold out.)
For the Beacon Festival, the Hon. Michael Wolff, recently retired as a justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, will talk about that court's decision 160 years ago requiring that Dred Scott remain a slave.
This magnificent natatorial and architectural treasure and its surroundings grounds are settings for a signature Beacon Festival Event.
The St. Lou Fringe – The Beacon believes in being as festive as possible and was delighted to welcome this fresh, creative, irreverent, exciting five-day celebration of the arts to the neighborhood and to act as a partner for it.
It’s one of engineering’s most graceful and sturdy systems – the Lamella Roof. In 1928, architect Gustel R. Kiewitt designed a huge show barn for St. Louis, one big enough to accommodate the annual National Dairy Show.
The lunch music finale, Concert Number 3, is at the Bonhomme Presbyterian Church, 14820 Conway Road, Chesterfield, 63017 on Monday, June 18.
(This event has been sold out; please join us for any of our other remaining events) Beacon associate editor Robert Duffy spent much of his career writing about art and architecture, and he believes St. Louis’s Bellefontaine Cemetery is one of America’s greatest cultural assets, a graveyard first, but beyond that a treasure land of artistic accomplishments.
Chip and May Reay – in addition to being best friends of the Beacon and co-chairs of not one but two enormously successful Beacon galas – are recognized nationally as creative and innovative gardeners. (This feast has been sold out)
Science meets the arts with your host and hostess, Bill Danforth and Maebelle Reed.
It’s Beacon Night At The Circus! This year’s show is “The Wizard – Merlin & The Legends of King Arthur.”
Unsuk Chin’s celebrated opera “Alice in Wonderland” receives its American premiere on the stage of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on this stellar night in June.
Gail Cassilly has written a frank and moving memoir that includes the founding of City Museum with her late ex-husband, Bob. (This feast has sold out.)
Concert Number 2 is at the Kirkwood Presbyterian Church, 100 East Adams Avenue, Kirkwood, 63122 on Monday, June 11.
Tom and Sally Schlafly Cohn are the careful and loving custodians of a historic house, once owned by Thomas K. Skinker, and their dining room, overlooking Sally’s marvelous garden, is home to the Beacon Festival’s seventh dinner. Expect bedazzlement.
Beacon editor Margaret Freivogel and journalist-lawyer husband William Freivogel live in one of the oldest houses in Kirkwood, Greystone Lodge. You’ll dine in the oldest part of it, a room originally a log cabin built in the 1820s. (This event has sold out)
Walt Whitman Award winner Sally Van Doren reads new poems and favorites from the past at the home of Meg and Peter Shinkle, followed by cocktails.
(This event has been sold out) Jessica Holzer and Mary and Michael Morgan have designed a truly memorable and absolutely moveable Shakespearean feast.
(This event has been sold out) You may not get goulash but you will be magnificently fed, because the Walkers have culinary surprises and great entertainment planned for you.
Concert Number 1 is in Forest Park’s magnificent Jewel Box, at the intersection of Wells Drive and McKinley, on Monday, June 4.
Choose this dinner and sing with your supper at a feast of music and food.
The first Sunday morning of the month at the New Sunnymount Missionary Baptist Church has become Beacon Festival tradition. Join us for the glorious gospel music of the church’s prize-winning Chancel Choir at 10 a.m.
Josephine and Richard Weil have created a fascinating botanical garden on surprising acreage in Clayton. (This event has sold out)
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Meeting in St. Louis next week, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious will have its first opportunity as an assembled group to consider what to do after the Vatican issued a mandate for change this spring. It calls on the conference to reorganize and more strictly observe church teachings.
When a family of four goes to the St. Louis Zoo, they can be forgiven for not knowing it will cost them $60, $72 if they park. If they can't pay, the alternative is to tell the kids they can't do what kids do at the zoo.
Missouri House Speaker Steve Tilley gave reporters less than a half-hour’s notice today when he announced that conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh’s sculptured bust will be formally installed in the Capitol at 1 p.m.
The world seems eager to learn more about Pope Francis, so learning that he admires St. Philippine Duchesne and her spiritual daughters — Argentinean nuns who have been under Francis' spiritual direction as they live among the poor — adds to understanding.
The celebration in Sikeston will reunite residents of the community which was destroyed in May 2011 when the Army Corps of Engineers opened the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway to alleviate flooding on the Mississippi. Residents are still hoping for a FEMA buyout so they can relocate their village.
The Newman Money Museum at Washington University has a quirky pseudo-robot Ben Franklin in the basement that is essentially a TV screen projected into a plastic shell head.
The Beacon's Mary Delach Leonard and Rob Koenig extensively covered flooding in 2011 in Missouri. Now this coverage is compiled in an iBook. Read the stories.
"Lost Egypt," at the St. Louis Science Center, combines real images shot in Egypt with art and artifacts as well as interactive and family-friendly features and explanations of the science used to uncover the ancient world. The exhibit will run through Sept. 2.
Opera is for snobs. Country music is for rednecks. Everybody loves Chuck Berry now that he's been around for a few decades, but what about Nelly? Why can't we simply respond to what's before us without dragging preconceptions and prejudices into play?
Organizers aren't trying to replace the rib fest, but music lovers will be able to find tangy sustenance as they listen to such greats as Mavis Staples (pictured), Big George Brock, Trombone Shorty, Kim Massie and Marquise Knox take the stage.
Donna Korando is the Beacon's arts and features editor. You can contact her at dkorando@stlbeacon.org.
Developers on the south side come in all shapes and sizes, with ambitions that vary from single buildings to entire city blocks. In the first of a two-part story, Jason Deem talks about building community.
Speaking to reporters at Monsanto, Howard Buffett warned that future generations would foot the bill for irresponsible soil use. He urged leaders to address thorny issues such as malnutrition and environmental destruction.
Twenty winners will split a million dollars and a wide array of professional services after this year's Arch Grants competition. Victors will also see one-on-one business mentoring in their prize package. The diverse group includes everything from biotech concerns to fashion enterprises.
Innovation and entrepreneurial activity are on the rise in St. Louis, especially in bioscience, technology and alternative energy. The Beacon's InnovationSTL section focuses on the people who are part of this wave, what they're doing and how this is shaping our future. To many St. Louisans, this wave is not yet visible. InnovationSTL aims to change that. We welcome you to share your knowledge, learn more about this vibrant trend and discuss its impact.
The Academy of Science-St. Louis hosts tours of EarthDance, an organic farm, and the Monsanto Agronomics and Breeding Facility May 21-22. The workshop is meant to prompt discussion and answer questions about these two competing philosophies of food production.
Speaking to reporters at Monsanto, Howard Buffett warned that future generations would foot the bill for irresponsible soil use. He urged leaders to address thorny issues such as malnutrition and environmental destruction.
Vernon Bowman's challenge to Monsanto Co.'s patent on its Roundup Ready soybean seeds was billed as a David vs. Goliath contest. Goliath won and won big. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that an Indiana soybean farmer had violated Monsanto's patent on its genetically engineered soybean seeds.
Sally Altman is the Beacon's Health and Science editor. You can contact her at saltman@stlbeacon.org.
Opera is for snobs. Country music is for rednecks. Everybody loves Chuck Berry now that he's been around for a few decades, but what about Nelly? Why can't we simply respond to what's before us without dragging preconceptions and prejudices into play?
You have to know your audience: McDonald's regulars don't need free-range chicken or a certain breed of beef; a second-chance high school needs personally motivated students as opposed to people ordered to attend and low-income Democrats by and large don't want a cigarette tax.
Last week, Grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura sacrificed his crown as the King of America. He faced an individual decision to play against the best in the nation or the best on the planet. Find out what happened at that world-level tournament.
Donna Korando is the Beacon's Voices editor. You can contact her and submit opinion pieces for possible publication at dkorando@stlbeacon.org.