Things to Do This Week in Boston

THEATER

Our Class
Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s play, based on the true story of a pogrom in a Polish village in 1941, returns to the stage via Arlekin Players. Słobodzianek examines the pogrom through the eyes of a group of 10 schoolchildren, half Jewish and half Catholic. Igor Golyak directs this new production, already a critical success off-Broadway.
$84.50-$155, through Sunday, June 22, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston

Mrs. Warren’s Profession
New York City theater company Bedlam takes on another work from George Bernard Shaw, one so controversial in its time that the whole cast of its 1905 American premiere was arrested. That’s because Mrs. Warren’s profession is a brothel madam, and her rise to prominence cast a bit too stark a light on Victorian moral hypocrisy.
$81-$97, through Sunday, June 22, Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)
American Repertory Theater hosts this musical rom-com production from English company Kiln Theatre. The couple: a British man, Dougal, who’s travelled to New York City for the second wedding of a father he doesn’t know very well, and an American, Kate, the sister of the bride, whose initial offer to pick up Dougal at the airport turs into a longer adventure.
$35-$150, through June 29, Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle St., Cambridge

Hello, Dolly!
It doesn’t get more classic Broadway than this 1964 musical about a plucky matchmaker (Aimee Doherty) in turn of the 20th century New York City. Dolly prides herself on her skills, but her latest client presents a problem: she wants him for herself. Fortunately, she’s clever and charming enough to make it happen—eventually.
$30-$86, through Sunday, June 22, Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon St., Boston

MOVIES

Roxbury International Film Festival
“Celebrating people of color around the world,” the Roxbury International Film Festival opens on Juneteenth with Catherine Gund’s documentary Paint Me a Road Out of Here, telling the fascinating story of For the Women’s House, a work by Faith Ringgold. Other highlights include the Canadian family drama Village Keeper (June 22) and festival closer May the Lord Watch (June 27), a documentary about the rap duo Little Brother.
Free-$165, Thursday, June 19 through June 27, various venues, Boston

28 Years Later
If 2002’s 28 Days Later and 2007’s 28 Weeks Later showed how it started, this new installment of the aggro zombie series shows how it’s going—and it’s not going great. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland return as writer and director, respectively, with a cast including Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and Jack O’Connell.
$12.99-$18.48, opens Thursday, June 19, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Elio
In Pixar’s latest creation, a misfit kid who dreams of outer space (Yonas Kibreab) finds himself unexpectedly drawn into an extraterrestrial world and mistaken for the ambassador from Earth. Now, he has to help save the Universe—no sweat, right?
$12.79-$24.18, opens Thursday, June 19, AMC Boston Common, 175 Tremont St., Boston

Materialists
Dakota Johnson stars in writer-director Celine Song’s rom-com as a matchmaker caught between a wealthy client who looks perfect on paper (Pedro Pascal) and an old flame (Chris Evans) who knows her better but hasn’t done much with his own life. But is that really such a bad thing?
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

The Phoenician Scheme
Despite the best efforts of some pranksters to replace him with AI, Wes Anderson continues to pump out movies at an increasingly rapid pace— the delightfully convoluted The Phoenician Scheme, starring Benicio del Toro as shifty businessman and arms dealer Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda, is his fourth already this decade.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

The Life of Chuck
Based on Stephen King’s non-horror novella of the same name, Mike Flanagan’s decades-spanning character study in reverse stars Tom Hiddleston as Chuck, a regular guy with a regular life. If that doesn’t sound Stephen King enough for you, don’t worry—there’s a bit more going on than that.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Pavements
Even among their eclectic peers, ’90s indie-rock icons Pavement were not an ordinary band, and Alex Ross Perry has not created an ordinary documentary about them, opting instead to embark on a set of projects—a musical, a biopic, and even a museum—that blur the line between fiction and reality.
$13-$15, through June 12, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning
The indefatigable Tom Cruise returns for the eighth time as super spy Ethan Hunt. Immediately following the previous installment, Dead Reckoning Part One, Final Reckoning resumes Hunt’s quest to stop the assassin Gabriel Martinelli (Esai Morales) from acquiring a powerful AI called the Entity. Catch it here in IMAX.
$12.69-$25.18, AMC Boston Common, 175 Tremont St., Boston

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life
Agathe (Camille Rutherford), the bookseller heroine of this comedy from director Laura Piani, dreams of publishing a book herself—and of finding love, Jane Austen style. When she lands an invitation to the Jane Austen Writers’ Residency, she winds up in a distinctly Austenian love triangle—but will she figure out how to get the ending she wants?
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Hurry Up Tomorrow
The Weeknd stars in this thriller as an insomniac musician drawn into an existential rabbit hole by a young woman named Anima (Jenna Ortega), whose name is identical to Carl Jung’s term for a man’s feminine side. Directed by Trey Edward Shults, the film is a companion to the Weeknd’s new album of the same name, released in January.
$16.25-$18.75, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Friendship
The sheer goofiness of Tim Robinson’s characters in I Think You Should Leave usually prevents the Netflix series’ comedy from getting too dark, but Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship, in which Robinson stars as a lonely guy who longs to be friends with his new neighbor (Paul Rudd), makes no such guarantees.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Thunderbolts*
Marvel’s continued rummaging through the more obscure corners of its superhero pantheon has turned up this team of anti-heroes, brought to life by an all-star cast including Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, and Hannah John-Kamen. If you’re wondering what the asterisk in the title is for, you’ll just have to find out.
$15.98-$19.48, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Sinners
Michael B. Jordan doubles down as a pair of twin brothers in Ryan Coogler’s action horror flick, set in a version of the Jim Crow South plagued both by systemic racism and vampires—and if you think the latter might be a metaphor for the former, you might be right.
$12.99-$16.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

The Wedding Banquet
The second film as writer and director for Andrew Ahn (Spa Night, Fire Island) tells the story of of a group of queer friends (Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, and Han Gi-chan) whose scheme involving an IVF treatment and a green card marriage goes awry when one of their grandmothers gets wind of the marriage an takes it a little too seriously.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

ALSO

• The Best Restaurants in Boston’s North End
• The Ultimate Guide to Candlepin Bowling in and around Boston

Want to suggest an event? Email us.

MONDAY (6/16/25)

MUSIC

James Blunt
2000s British pop heartthrob James Blunt is back to remind you that “You’re Beautiful” on this tour for the 20^th anniversary of his smash debut Back to Bedlam. Many Americans know him almost exclusively for that hit single, but he landed several more in his native United Kingdom and continental Europe, including 2013’s “Bonfire Heart.”
$67.75, 8 p.m., MGM Music Hall, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Andy Husbands
WBUR’s Curated Cuisine series welcomes this local chef, whose Smoke Shop BBQ has been named Best Barbecue by this magazine four times, most recently in 2022. He’ll share invaluable tips for classing up your grilling game from his new Quick and Easy Burger Cookbook, co-written with Chris Hart and Andrea Pyenson.
$20-$30, 6:30 p.m., WBUR CitySpace, 890 Comm. Ave., Boston

TUESDAY (6/17/25)

MUSIC

Andrew Montana
Though raised in Southern California, alt-folk singer-songwriter Andrew Montana frequently visited Appalachia with his family as a kid, and it’s audible in his music. In the for video his recently release “Reds,” he charismatically broods while smoking on a bike somewhere in Kentucky. He’ll be joined by locals Molly O’Leary and Justin Arena, Emma Cashman, and Tiny the Bear.
$17.85, 6 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

WEDNESDAY (6/18/25)

MUSIC

Juniper
Not to be confused with the ’90s Irish rock group that spawn the career of Damien Rice, the American Juniper hails from Nashville and weaves an airy mixture of R&B and indie pop. Their new single “Secrets 307” falls on the indie pop side of the equation. Sailing along to swift beat with a deceptively carefree melody, it’s a great track for weekend drives with the windows down.
$20.72, 8 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

MOVIES

Good Burger
The Coolidge Corner Theater’s annual outdoor series at the Charles River Speedway opens with this 90s time capsule, a wacky expansion of the beloved sketch from Nickelodeon’s All That starring Kel Mitchell and future Saturday Night Live mainstay Keenan Thompson as mom and pop burger joint employees determined to beat the corporate competition.
Free, 8 p.m., Charles River Speedway, 525 Western Ave., Brighton

THURSDAY (6/19/25)

JUNETEENTH

Freedom Cookout at the Shirley-Eustis House
A relatively new Juneteeth tradition returning for its third year, the Freedom Cookout includes lawn games, arts and crafts, live music from the Christman Collective, a book fair, and a free cookout. The 12 enslaved people who lived on the grounds of this colonial governor’s mansion will be honored in the afternoon with a special ceremony.
Free, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Shirley-Eustis House, 33 Shirley St., Boston

MUSIC

Less Than Jake
These Floridian third wave ska icons are stopping by for a little thing they’re calling the Summer Circus, joined by contemporaries Fishbone and the Suicide Machines and younger ska faith-keepers Bite Me Bambi. 2020’s Silver Linings was Less Than Jakes’ last full-length album.
$51-$122.70, 7 p.m., Citizens House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston

A Beacon School
As A Beacon School, New York City bedroom pop maestro Patrick J. Smith makes songs that dream of peace in the midst of urban chaos, occasional taking a break from his usual blissed-out indie muse for a bit of house music. 2023’s yoyo is his most recent album.
$26.94, 8 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

COMEDY

Henry Cho
Raised in a Korean American family in Knoxville, Tennessee, veteran comic Henry Cho has long exploited the fact that many Americans don’t expect a guy who looks like him to sound like he does. In 2023, he was the first comedian in 40 years to be inducted as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, a sign of just how beloved he is in his homeland.
$49-25-$65.45, 7:30 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Jessica Shattuck
Now in paperback, Jessica Shattuck’s 2024 novel Last House tells the story of the Taylor family, whose patriarch, Nick, makes a killing in the oil industry after coming home from World War II—but as time passes and successive generations of Taylors come of age, that black gold starts to look more like blood on the family’s hands.
Free, 7 p.m., Porter Square Books, 1815 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

FRIDAY (6/20/25)

MUSIC

Leyla McCalla
Former Carolina Chocolate Drops member Leyla McCalla was best known earlier in her career for her cello work, but she switched to banjo and guitar on her 2019 solo album The Capitalist Blues. Her last album, 2024’s Sun Without the Heat, synthesized several different strains of African diasporic music in a distinctive form, uniting them under the sway of her jazzy vocals.
$44.50, 7 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

Sarah Klang
Though still obscure in the United States, Sarah Klang is a big deal back home in Sweden, where her first four albums landed in the top ten. While her country-inflected alternative pop isn’t particularly groundbreaking, her shapeshifting singing, reminiscent in different moments of Angel Olsen, Kate Bush, and Joanna Newsom, lends her recordings an unmistakable aura.
$25, 8 p.m., Club Passim, 47 Palmer St., Cambridge

Mohini Dey
This bass prodigy, a native of Kolkata, India, has been performing since the age of 11. In recent years, her fast, fluid, rubbery style has gained the attention of connoisseurs like Rick Beato. Her self-titled 2023 debut album opens with a furious bass riff and refuses to let up, bouncing from buzzsaw prog metal to smooth jazz funk and back again.
$35-$41.79, 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., Regattabar, 1 Bennett St., Cambridge

COMEDY

Jack Burke
Comedians are used to dealing with hecklers, but in this clip from last year, up-and-coming Boston comic Jack Burke finds his set interrupted by an Amber Alert. “Has anyone seen anything?” he asks with a smirk. He also occasionally makes video sketches like this collaboration with Joe Nunnink, depicting the ultimate fantasy of a mediocre job applicant.
$25.85, 7:30 p.m., White Bull Tavern, 1 Union St., Boston

OPERA

Boston Modern Orchestra Project: Frederick Douglass
The final opera from composer Ulysses Kay, Frederick Douglass was first performed in 1991; this will be its second complete performance. Donald Dorr’s libretto focuses on the end of the great abolitionist’s life, mixing history and fiction to probe the heart of a complex personality.
Pay-what-you-want, 7:30 p.m., Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough St., Boston

SATURDAY (6/21/25)

FESTIVALS

Cambridge Arts River Festival
Celebrate the official start of summer with six stages of music, theater, dance, and other performances, art making activities, international food offerings, photobooths, dance beats from A Trike Called Funk, and much more. The centerpiece, as always, is the parade and its Mermaid Promenade, with giant puppets, folks dressed as merfolk, and live music.
Free, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Memorial Dr. between John F. Kennedy St. and Western Ave., Cambridge

MUSIC

OUTLOUD Music Festival
Boston’s Pride Parade and Festival may have been last weekend, but June is not over. OUTLOUD includes performances from Flo Milli, Rebecca Black, G Flip, Frankie Grande, Big Body Kweeng, Hannah Rad, Math3ca, and Oompa, plus a DJ set from the powerhouse combo of Kim Petras and Trixie Mattel.
$69.41-$172.18, 2 p.m., 525 William F. McClellan Hwy, East Boston

Cults
Best known for “Always Forever,” a blissfully woozy riff on Beach House, and their hazily dramatic 2017 single “Gilded Lily,” this New Yok City indie duo has maintained their—no pun intended—cult following across numerous musical microtrends. Last summer, they released their sixth studio album, To the Ghosts.
$20-$25, 8:30 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

The Rumjacks
Australia’s answer to the Dropkick Murphys, celtic punks the Rumjacks landed an entry in the Great St. Patrick’s Day Songbook with “An Irish Pub Song.” On the track, a lone penny whistle dances over furious power chords as lead singer Mike Rivkees growls sardonic lyrics about the not-so-authentic aspects of many so-called Irish pubs.
$26.19, 7 p.m., Sonia, 10 Brookline St., Cambridge

Gauri B: Love, Money, Shame
Punjabi comedian Gauri B is a roast queen and a crowd work master—check out this clip, in which she reduces down a smugly sexist audience member to sheepishness—but she’ll be going easier on her audience for this show, focusing mostly on stories from her life and takes on the world.
$21.20-$31.20, 5 p.m., The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge

DANCE

OnStage Dance Company’s Season 28 Performance
The Malden-based company, now in its 15^th year, presents an eclectic mix of original works in jazz, tap, Chinese fusion, modern dance, and other genres—in fact, you’d be hard pressed to find more variety in a single local dance program this year.
$23.18, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m., Boston University Dance Theater, 915 Comm. Ave., Boston

DRAG

Read My Lips: A Drag Tournament
A roster of eight drag performers is squaring off with their “most sickening” lip sync performances, and you’ll get to decide which two advance to the final round. Well-known local queen Kori King (RuPaul’s Drag Race) is your host and the final judge. If you’re looking to keep the fun going, there’s a separately ticketed after party at 9:30.
$27.50-$109.90, 7:30 p.m., Huntington Theater, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston

OUTDOORS

Summer SOLSTICE at Mount Auburn Cemetery
Take some time for a spiritual check-in with this set of separately ticketed solstice events, including mindful walks, a flower crown workshop, a yoga class, a poetry reading, sound meditation, and more, topped off at the end of the day with a jazz performance from Stan Strickland.
Free-$33.85, 10 a.m.-7:30 p.m., Mount Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge

SUNDAY (6/22/25)

MUSIC

BANKS
With her 2014 hit single “Beggin for Thread,” Jillian Rose Banks brought a bit of Lana Del Rey’s femme fatale persona to the club. Her new album Off With Her Head is a shadowy collection of dance and R&B, alternately intimate and grandiose.
$55.75-$267.85, 8 p.m., Citizens House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston

SHOPPING

Summer Solstice Plant Market
Are the vibes off in your house or apartment? Perhaps it needs more plants. The 40-plus local vendors at this market have all sorts, plus plant-related items, art, and other creations to get those vibes back in working order.
Free, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

MONDAY (6/23/25)

BOOKS + READINGS

J. Courtney Sullivan
J. Courtney Sullivan’s latest novel, The Cliffs, would make a perfect beach read this summer, especially in Maine, which is where protagonist Jane discovers a mysterious abandoned Victorian home as a teenager, only to be drawn back there as an adult, commissioned by its new owner—who believes the place is haunted—to research its history.
Free-$20.19, 6 p.m., Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge

Ongoing

OUTDOORS

Kayak and Paddleboard Rentals at Community Boating
You’ve seen the river from the city more times than you could count, but have you ever seen the city from the river? Rent a vessel, explore the Charles River basin and esplanade lagoon system at your leisure, and take in a view of Boston like no other.
$40, through October 31, Community Boating, 21 David G Mugar Way, Boston

SHOPPING

Courtesy

SoWa Open Market
This popular Sunday event features more than 250 farmers and vendors selling their own food, jewelry, clothing, household items, art, and more, plus special performances and events, a chance to check out the nearby open studios of dozens of local artists, and a rotating selection of food trucks.
Free, Sundays rain or shine through October 26, 11 a.m-5 p.m., 500 Harrison Ave., Boston

Copley Square Farmers Market
The Boston area has no shortage of farmers markets in the warmer months, but Copley Square hosts the largest, offering a cornucopia of local produce, meats, dairy, baked goods, and prepared meals, as well as some non-edible products. It opens for the season this Friday, May 16.
Free, Tuesdays and Fridays through November 25, Copley Square, 227-230 Dartmouth St., Boston

FITNESS

Seaport Sweat
Get a little closer to your best self with the help of these outdoor classes, taking place Monday through Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings until the end of summer. The regular weekday schedule features Pilates, yoga, Zumba, athletic conditioning, and more; some of Saturday’s rotating classes include dance cardio/sculpting workout Sculpt That Sass, the high-intensity Broncore Bootcamp, “endorphin boosting” mainstay Booty by Brabants, and the kickboxing-inspired Kick It By Eliza. New this year: the Sweatapalooza.
Free, Monday, May 5 through September 30, Seaport Common, 85 Northern Ave., Boston

ATTRACTIONS

Blue Man Group
They’re hardly the newest act on the scene, but there’s still nothing like Blue Man Group, that trio of funny, expressive bald dudes who don’t seem to know how to talk but do seem to know how to make percussion instruments out of just about anything—and Boston is one of just a handful of cities with their own Blue Man chapter performing in apparent perpetuity.
$49-$150, Charles Playhouse, 74 Warrenton St., Boston

Courtesy

Museum of Ice Cream
Yes, you can eat as much ice cream as you want at the Museum of Ice Cream, but there’s a lot more to this escapist wonderland, billed as “a place free from distractions, expectations, and inhibitions.” There are several colorful, slightly surreal spaces to explore at your leisure, including the Diner, Creamliner (an imaginary airplane interior), Hall of Freezers, Carnival, and Sprinkle Pool.
$25-$51, 121 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Courtesy Museum of Illusions

Museum of Illusions
Experience the delights of confusing your brain at this new downtown attraction, featuring a set of images, installations, and “illusion rooms” designed to make reality feel a little less normal—and to provide some fun and crazy photo ops for the Gram.
$38, 200 State St., Boston

View Boston
If you’ve got visitors and you want to give them a killer 360-degree view of the city, or if you just want a peep yourself, you can hardly do better than View Boston, at the top of the Prudential Center. You can spring for a guided tour or just take it in yourself. The view isn’t all you’ll find up there—there’s also a restaurant, The Beacon, and Stratus, a cocktail bar, which is decked out for the holidays. Higher-level ticket packages include a sample drink.
$29.99-59.99, open daily, 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Prudential Center, 800 Boylston St., Boston

The Innovation Trail
This tour focuses not on colonial and revolutionary Boston—that’s been thoroughly covered—but on the city’s history, down to the present, as a hub of science, medicine, and technology. You can arrange for a private tour via an online form or opt for a self-guided experience whenever you want.
Free (self-guided), starts in Central Square, Cambridge or Downtown Crossing, Boston

WNDR Museum
This Downtown Crossing gallery space is hitting the ground running with iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Let’s Survive Forever and more than 20 other immersive installations, including The Wisdom Project, where visitors can add their own response to the question “What do you know for sure?,” and WNDR’s signature Light Floor, which changes in response to visitors’ movement.
$32-$38, 500 Washington St., Boston

ART + EXHIBITIONS (Ongoing)

Making History: 200 Years of American Art from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
This exhibition highlights the important contributions of American artists from marginalized groups, placing them alongside well-known figures like Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, and Stuart Davis to create a more complete perspective on art’s role in shaping American identity.
$25, Saturday, June 14 through September 21, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Monsters of the Deep: Between Imagination and Science
Tracing our understanding of whales through prints dating from the 1500s through the 1800s, the MIT Museum explores the process, informed both by scientific study and amateur observation, that brought the enormous creatures up from the quasi-mythical depths of the human imagination and into the light of day.
$18, through January 1, 2026, MIT Museum, 314 Main St., Bldg. E-28, Cambridge

Boston Public Art Triennial’s The Exchange
This sprawling indoor and outdoor art show will be held every three years. The highly varied, eye-popping works on display for 2025, from a mix of local, national, and international artists, are strewn across town, but easily accessible via the T over the course of a day—check the map for full details.
Free, through October 31, various locations, Boston area

List Projects 32: Elif Saydam
With frequent references to the traditions of manuscript illumination and miniature painting, Berlin-based artist Elif Saydam takes an interest in how we project our fantasies on banal, everyday places like gas stations and convenience stores, as well as the objects they contain, from bathroom stalls to sponges.
Free, Thursday, June 5 through August 31, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St., Bldg. E15-109, Cambridge

GENERATIONS
Three local artists, L’Merchie Frazier, Daniela Rivera, and Wen-ti Tsen, recipients of the first Wagner Arts Fellowship, take the spotlight. There’s something here for every taste, from Frazier’s narratively rich mixed-media quilts to Rivera’s challenging geometric sculptures to Tsen’s Hopper-esque realist paintings.
Free, through November 30, MassArt Art Museum, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston

The Solomon Collection: Dürer to Degas and Beyond
Collectors Arthur K. and Mariot F. Solomon recently made a large bequest to Harvard Art Museums, and you’ll get to see 135 of those works here, by major artists like Goya, Dürer, Monet, Degas, Cézanne, Henry Moore, Anthony Caro, Jules Olitski, and many others
Free, through August 17, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Chiharu Shiota: Home Less Home
The Institute of Contemporary Art’s enormous Watershed annex hosts two installations from Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota: a site-specific version of 2015’s Accumulation—Searching for the Destination and the new commission Home Less Home. Both works repurpose everyday objects like suitcases, papers, and furniture to convey the experience of migration and the meaning of home.
Free, through September 1, ICA Watershed, 256 Marginal St., East Boston

Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams
At a time of increasing social atomization, multimedia artist Jung Yeondoo has made it his project to break the ice with the people in his vicinity, photographing folks in his hometown of Seoul and asking them about their inner lives. Often capturing his subjects in their home or workplace, he has a knack for finding the idealism hidden in ordinary life.
$25, through January 26, 2026, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Castaway: The Afterlife of Plastic
These photographs from Mexico City-based art collective TRES may seem to depict eccentric pieces of handcrafted sculpture or perhaps even jewelry, but they’re actually pictures of plastic debris from the ocean, altered by miniscule creatures of the phylum Bryozoa. TRES’ original charts and maps help to contextualize the phenomenon.
$15, through June 26, 2025, Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge

The Visionary Art of Minnie Evans
The 20th century Black North Carolinian artist Minnie Evans fused a passion for religion and mythology with close studies of her material surroundings. Though mystical and dreamlike, her art is also haunted by history—specifically, the white supremacist coup that took place in her hometown, Wilmington, when she was six years old.
$27, through October 26, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Qi Baishi: Inspiration in Ink
Born in the Qing dynasty and dying under Communist rule, Qi Baishi, sometimes called “the Picasso of China,” was recognized as an innovator whose lively, charming depictions of animals and plants pushed the well-worn tradition of nature scenes toward modernity. Almost 40 of his works are on display here, most on loan from China.
$27, through September 28, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Eric Antoniou: Rock to Baroque
Over a 40-year career, local photographer Eric Antoniou has captured some of popular music’s biggest stars on tour in Boston, including David Bowie, Madonna, Donna Summer, the Rolling Stones, B.B. King, U2, Dizzy Gillespie, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, and many more. This exhibition serves as a companion to his new book, Rock to Baroque.
Free, through June 30, Panopticon Gallery, 502c Comm. Ave., Boston 

Luis Arnías: Slow Loops
Interdisciplinary artist Luis Arnías offers a pair of 16mm film meditations on Black life and history. Bisagras focuses on two important sites on both sides of the transatlantic slave trade; the still-in-progress Noise Cloud shows how public parks gained an even greater importance as gathering spaces for people of all races in the turbulent year 2020.
Free, through July 19, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St., Boston

Aileen Erickson: Changing Seasons, Save Travels
If you’ve ever brought a rock, piece of driftwood, or bit of seaglass home from the beach, you might understand why Aileen Erickson felt so compelled to paint her own beach finds in this series. Rendered in a cartoon-like fashion within thick black lines, these objects become containers of memory, gaining in symbolic depth what they lose in spatial depth.
Free, through July 19, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St., Boston

Christian Marclay: Doors
It took Christian Marclay over 10 years to carefully craft this video piece out of hundreds of clips of people opening and closing doors in films, resulting in a surreal journey between cinematic universes. For Marclay, doors evoke a “fear and anxiety we associate with the unknown, but also anticipation and potential.”
$20, through September 1, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon
How High the Moon traces the 50-year career of abstract painter Stanley Whitney, showing his early work and the wide-ranging inspirations, from jazz to quilts to architecture, informing the joyfully pulsing grids of color that made him a late in life success in the early 2000s.
$20, through September 1, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Vincent Van Gogh’s Camille Roulin, November–December 1888, from the MFA’s “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits.” / Photo by Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits
Featuring around 20 works by Van Gogh, this exhibition, the first of its kind, focuses on the famous post-impressionist’s close and creatively generative relationship with his neighbors in Arles, France, the Roulins, who had the sort of ordinary family life he dreamed of but never achieved.
$34,through September 7, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver
This is the first New England exhibition for Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, spanning 60 years of her career, most of which she spent as a British expatriate in Mexico. Carrington’s drolly bizarre and mysterious works, equally amusing and unsettling, brought a gothic sensibility to the typical Surrealist fascination with dreams, mythology, and the unconscious.
Free, through June 1, Rose Art Museum, 415 South St., Waltham

Edvard Munch, “Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones),” 1906–08. Oil on canvas. Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum, The Philip and Lynn Straus Collection.

Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking
While The Scream made Edvard Munch a household name in art history, its fame has come somewhat at the expense of the rest of his large and remarkable oeuvre. Featuring around 70 works, many from Harvard Art Museums’ own collection, this exhibition highlights the emotive Norwegian expressionist’s innovations in materials and techniques.
Free, through July 27, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Free as they want to be: Artists Committed to Memory
Harvard’s Cooper Gallery casts a spotlight on the role of photography and film in shaping our cultural memory of slavery and the post-emancipation era, from the work of 19th century photographer James Presley Ball to the reflections of contemporary figures like William Earle Williams and Omar Victor Diop.
Free, through June 30, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, 102 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge

Pedro Gómez-Egaña: The Great Learning
Columbian artist Pedro Gómez-Egaña’s first American museum exhibition explores our contemporary experience of time, as he puts it, “in an age when contrasting temporalities coexist with an intensity that often feels irreconcilable.” To convey the idea, he transposes this fracture of time into a space whose solidity is constantly interrupted, multiplied, and otherwise messed with.
Free, through July 27, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St., Bldg. E15-109, Cambridge

Believers: Artists and the Shakers
Known for their celibacy, their craftsmanship, and not often much else, the monastic and pacifist Shakers, only two of whom remain, are a benignly mysterious presence in American religion. Building on a previous ICA show, this exhibition brings together 10 artists reflecting on the gap between the Shakers’ ideals and their place in the popular imagination.
$20, through August 3, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Courtesy

ImPRINTING: The Artist’s Brain
Artist Beatie Wolfe created this “sonic self-portrait” in the form of a “thinking cap” that broadcasts the activity of different parts of the human brain. At listening station, you can pick up a phone receiver and hear for yourself. The data, encoded in glass inside the cap, could be preserved for as long as 10,000 years.
$31, through December 31, Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston

John Wilson, The Young Americans: Gabrielle (detail), 1975. Colored crayon and charcoal on paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. © Estate of John Wilson.

Witnessing Humanity: The Art of John Wilson
Throughout his career, Roxbury-born artist John Wilson documented the impacts of racism on Black communities and individuals with defiant power and dignity. Co-organized with the Met in New York, this is the largest exhibition his work to date, with 110 pieces on display, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints, spanning 60 years.
$27, through June 22, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World
Bringing together works from an international assortment of 20 lenders, this show investigates the exchange between art and science in Islamic societies from the Middle Ages to the present, with special reference to the concept of wonder in the work of medieval scholar Zakariyya al-Qazwini. Its 170 works range from scientific instruments to maps to paintings to reputedly demon-repelling “magic bowls.”
Free, through June 1, McMullen Museum of Art, 2101 Comm. Ave., Brighton

Portraits from the ICA Collection
The ICA shares recent acquisitions from artists like Rania Matar, Aliza Nisenbaum, and Didier William, as well as popular longtime holdings by Marlene Dumas, Nan Goldin, Alice Neel, and others, creating a complex, multimedia portrait of portraiture itself, in all its many purposes and effects.
$20, through January 4, 2026, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Landscape and Labor: Dutch Works on Paper in Van Gogh’s Time
The Museum of Fine Arts examines the Hague School artists of the 19th century Netherlands, whose commitment to scenes of everyday rural life, partly a nostalgic reaction to the rise of industrialism, had a decisive influence on Van Gogh’s earthy early work.
$27, through June 22, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Robert Frank: Mary’s Book
Revealing a more intimate side of the Swiss American photographer, Mary’s Book focuses on a photo scrapbook Robert Frank made in 1949 for his eventual first wife, Mary Lockspeiser. Crucial to the experience of these images are Frank’s poetic inscriptions, which add a personal touch to a set of pictures with few human figures.
$27, through June 22, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Sea Monsters: Wonders of Nature and Imagination
Using historic illustrations, maps, artifacts, and specimens, this exhibition explores the exotic marine beasts cooked up in the dreams of sailors and bards down the centuries, as well as the real-life creatures, like the giant squid, whose scarcely believable existence inspired many of these legends.
$15, through June 26, 2026, Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge

Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition
Although Robert Ballad, the leader of the team that discovered the wreck of the Titanic, hoped no one would ever go back look for cool stuff there, people totally did. This show, offering a fascinating and intimate glimpse into the famous ocean liner’s lost world, is the first chance Bostonians have had in several years to view these objects.
$39.50-$65, through June 1, The Castle at Park Plaza, 130 Columbus Ave., Boston

Hugh Hayden, Hedges, 2019. Sculpted wood, lumber, hardware, mirror, and carpet. / Hugh Hayden; Courtesy of the Shed Open Call and Lisson Gallery. Photo by Mark Waldhauser Photograph by Mark Waldhauser.

Hugh Hayden: Home Work
Artist Hugh Hayden‘s first New England exhibition is now at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum. The surrealist sculptor’s show explores the complexities of the American Dream through unsettling transformations of everyday objects. Taking up 7,000 square feet of gallery space, the exhibition turns familiar items like tables and school desks into challenging artworks. The centerpiece, “Hedges (2019),” features a model suburban house with branches bursting through its walls, placed in a mirrored infinity room that creates endless reflections. Through these works, Hayden comments on both psychological barriers and social inequalities that make the American Dream nearly impossible to achieve for so many today. —JACI CONRY
Rose Art Museum, through June 1, 415 South St., Waltham, 781-736-3434.

The elusive narwhal with its magnificent spiral tooth has inspired art, legend, and cultural practice for centuries. / Glenn Williams, Narwhal Tusk Research

Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend
Instantly recognizable among cetaceans for its remarkably long horn, the narwhal is unlike any other sea creature, seemingly ripped from the pages of a fanciful medieval world map. Not satisfied to stop at the narwhal’s mere oddness, this Smithsonian exhibition dives deep into its changing artic world, with input from scientists and members of the Inuit communities who’ve known it the longest.
$25, through June 15, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

The Salem Witch Trials 1692
Even when the story of the Salem Witch Trials is told with accuracy, the distance of centuries can make it hard to imagine. With this ongoing exhibition, the Peabody Essex Museum tries to close that gap a bit, bringing the timeline and context of the infamous miscarriage of justice to life through original documents and artifacts.
$25, ongoing, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

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