Things to Do This Week in Boston

Your frequently updated guide to getting off the couch and out of the house.


THINGS TO DO THIS WEEK (clockwise from top left): Matthew Bajor’s Interference Patterns at the Harvard Ed Portal; The Cher Show at Boch Center Wang Theater; Dropkick Murphys at Citizens House of Blues; Jean Appolon Expressions: An n Ale at Institute of Contemporary Art; St. Patrick’s Day is everywhere; riot-lady rock legends Sleater-Kinney at Paradise Rock Club.

Jump to:Tuesday, March 19 | Wednesday, March 20 | Thursday, March 21 | Friday, March 22 | Saturday, March 23 | Sunday, March 24 | Monday, March 25Art & Exhibitions | Upcoming |

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MULTIPLE DAYS
Ongoing through Monday, March 25 (and Beyond)

SEASONAL FUN

Photograph by Annielly Camargo, courtesy of the Downtown Boston BID

Winteractive
Inspired by the winter festivals of Québec, Winteractive features 16 different works, some interactive, some enormous, all strewn across Downtown—a pair of giant clown heads, an imposing metal cube that hides a magical diorama, a unicorn in a frosted display case, and much more. Check the website above for the exact address of each piece.
Free, through April 14, various locations, Downtown Boston

FOOD + DRINK

See also: Where to Eat in Greater Boston in March 2024

Dine Out Boston
Boston’s biannual culinary fete returns for its spring edition, with 171 participating restaurants in the the two-week extravaganza. From Asian fusion to classic French bistros, there’s an abundance of cuisine options offered at specially priced prix fixe menus for lunch and dinner, with takeout and delivery options available.
Prices vary, through March 23, 2024, various Greater Boston locations

CONVENTIONS

PAX East
Gamers of Boston, rejoice—PAX is back again, and it’s stacked as always with performances, panels, tournaments, tabletop gaming, a console library going as far back as the ’80s, an expo hall with established and up-and-coming developers, and more. If your eyes aren’t twitching by the end, you haven’t gone hard enough—okay, well, maybe don’t go that hard.
$67-$250 Thursday through Sunday, March 21-24, Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St., Boston

THEATER

Girl from the North Country
This Grammy and Tony-winning 2017 jukebox musical, written and directed by Conor McPherson (The Weir, The Night Alive), weaves the immortal songs of Bob Dylan into the fictional story of a set of travelers in a Minnesota guesthouse during the Great Depression.
$35-$230, Tuesday, March 12 through March 24, Emerson Colonial Theater, 106 Boylston St., Boston

Beyond Words
Produced by MIT’s Catalyst Collaborative and Central Square Theater, Beyond Words tells the true story of Harvard researcher Irene Pepperberg, who claims to have taught a parrot, Alex, to speak and solve problems at the level of small human child—proof, she believes, that parrots aren’t just skilled mimics, but able to comprehend language.
$24-$93, through April 14, Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

Cost of Living
SpeakEasy Stage’s spring season continues with this Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Martyna Majok, which casts a spotlight on the dynamics between disabled and abled people, centering on two pairs: John, a PhD student with cerebral palsy and Jess, his aide, and Eddie, a former truck driver, and his ex-wife Ani, who was left a quadriplegic after a horrible accident.
$25-$80, through March 30, Roberts Studio Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston

King Hedley II
Actors’ Shakespeare Projects returns to the world of August Wilson with this dark tale of a man attempting to get his life together after seven years of incarceration—but the conditions in 1985 Pittsburgh are bleak, and despite his commanding name, King’s ambitions may be a bit greater than he can manage.
$20-$59.50, through March 31, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Roxbury

Stand Up If You’re Here Tonight
Jim Ortlieb stars in this interactive one-man play by John Kolvenbach, presented in The Huntington Theater’s smaller Maso Studio. As for what it’s about, Kolvenbach offers the following on the Huntington’s website: “The show is about a guy trying to do the impossible, or the nearly impossible: he wants to achieve a kind of union with the audience, a oneness.”
$55-$60, extended through March 23, The Huntington Theater, 264 Huntington St., Boston

DANCE

Boston Ballet: Cinderella
Going from winter to spring can feel like a rags-to-riches story, so it’s fitting that Prokofiev’s Cinderella arrives on the Boston Ballet stage just in time for the equinox, complete with Frederick Ashton’s classic choreography and costumes and sets based on the British master’s original production.
$25-$300, through March 24, Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston

MUSIC

The Magnetic Fields
Stephin Merritt, one of indie pop’s great baritone vocalists, is touring with his best known band to celebrate the anniversary of their best known album, the three hour masterpiece 69 Love Songs—a record so long that it’ll take them two shows to play it all.
$45-$98, Sunday and Monday, March 24-25, Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Brighton

Celebrity Series Stave Sessions
Catch a diverse array of adventurous young musicians at this mini-fest, featuring flutist/vocalist/composer Nathalie Joachim performing her soulfully avant-garde electronic song cycle Ki moun ou ye (Wednesday), innovative classical guitar virtuoso JIJI (Thursday), keyboardists Chromic Duo, who employ toy pianos and electronics to create a richly layered atmosphere (Friday), and grooved-out jazz-funk guitarist Mark Lettieri (Saturday).
$34, Wednesday through Saturday, March 20-23, Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

COMEDY

Jordan Jensen
Opposed to all forms of euphemism, this straight-talking standup has a distinct perspective, developed in part from her being raised by, in her words, “a pack of lesbians.” She released a new half hour special, 30 Minutes with Jordan Jensen, in September.
$33, Thursday through Saturday, March 21-23, Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

Taylor, the Next Jedi: an Improvised Star Wars Parody
Just like J.J. Abrams with Emperor Palpatine, Improv Asylum has dug their Star Wars spoof out of the grave for another round of performances. In each show, an audience member is cast as the titular protagonist and put through whirlwind of ridiculous space drama, set off by a few suggestions from the rest of the audience.
$35, through May 17, Improv Asylum, 216 Hanover St., Boston

MOVIES

Love Lies Bleeding
Kristen Stewart stars in this A24 romantic thriller as Lou, a 1980s gym manager struck dumb with love upon the arrival of bodybuilder Jackie (Katy O’Brian). The only threat to their bond is Jackie’s involvement with the illegal business of Lou’s father (Ed Harris).
$10.99-$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Still Walking: The Cinema of Hirokazu Kore-eda
Celebrated Korean director Hirokazu Kore-eda will appear in person for Q&As at several screenings in this six-film series, which starts with his early breakthrough After Life, a vision of the filmmaking project that might await us after death, and ends with his most recent film, Monster, a complex look at the relationships between parents, teachers, and students.
$12.50-$14.50, Friday through Sunday, March 15-17, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Problemista
Saturday Night Live writer Julio Torres wrote, directed, and stars in this surreal comedy as Alejandro, an aspiring toy designer in New York who’s struggling with his immigration status. His best chance for a sponsor is his erratic boss (Tilda Swinton), but she doesn’t exactly make it easy for him.
$10.99-$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Dune: Part Two
Denis Villeneuve’s immersive adaptation of Frank Herbert’s legendary sci-fi novel comes to a thrilling conclusion in its long-awaited second half, in which Timothée Chalamet—ahem, Paul Atreides—leads the Fremen in a battle to re-take the planet Aarrakis from the villainous and extremely pale Harkonnen dynasty.
$15, through March 16, Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston

Hundreds of Beavers
Director Mike Cheslik’s 2022 slapstick comedy may mimic the look of old silent films, but it exists in a deranged semi-cartoon universe all its own. Ryland Brickson Cole Tews plays a lone 19th century fur trapper who takes on a gang of wily beavers played by a bunch of people in giant, sports mascot-style beaver costumes.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

Drive-Away Dolls
Co-written and directed by the unmistakable Ethan Coen, this road strip comedy stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as Jamie and Marian, a pair of young women who up and leave for Tallahassee, where they get mixed up with a group of not-very-good criminals.
$12-$16, through Thursday, March 14, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

Perfect Days
Wim Wenders’ newest film drops in on the life of Hirayama (Kōji Yakusho), a solitary Japanese man who cleans Tokyo’s rather stunningly designed public toilets for a living. It may not seem like a desirable job, but the endearing Hirayama approaches it, and the rest of his unexpectedly full life, with passion and wisdom.
$13.50-$15.50, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

UNIQLO Festival of Films from Japan
This series of six mostly contemporary Japanese films starts Friday with a delightfully deranged 1977 classic, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, an psychedelic horror trip which manages to be cute, funny, and disturbing at the same time—sometimes even within the same minute.
$15, through April 4, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer directed this feature-length adaptation of Martin Amis’ novel about Auschwitz chief Rudolf Höss and his family, who lived in disturbing comfort right next to the death camp. If you’re thinking there’s no way they could have kept themselves completely shielded from the horrors inside, you are right.
$13.50-$15.50, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Anyone But You
Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria) and Glen Powell (Top Gun: Maverick) star in this rom com update of Much Ado About Nothing as a failed couple forced to spend time with each other when they’re both invited to a destination wedding. Neither is happy about it—until they realize that pretending to make amends might be in their mutual best interest.
$11.59-$15.49, AMC Boston Common 175 Tremont St., Boston

American Fiction
Recalling Spike Lee’s outrageous Bamboozled, this satire from writer-director Cord Jefferson follows a Black novelist (Jeffrey Wright) who, exasperated with the entertainment industry profiting from Black stereotypes, creates a ridiculously clichéd novel as a joke, only to watch it become a huge hit.
$13.50-$15.50, Showcase Superlux Chestnut Hill, 55 Boylston St, Newton

Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest mind-bender, based on the 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, stars Emma Stone as a woman resurrected from the dead by a scientist (Willem Dafoe). Hungry for experience, she runs off with a libertine lawyer (Mark Ruffalo) in a journey that will take her across the globe.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

TOURS

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. 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 new 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 pay for a guided tour on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday through the end of October, or opt for a self-guided experience whenever you want.
Free-$20, now open, starts in Central Square, Cambridge or Downtown Crossing, Boston


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MONDAY (3/18/24)

MUSIC

Bombay Bicycle Club
Active since the mid-2000s (apart from a three-year hiatus), this English band have explored a variety of sounds, from slightly mathy post-Fugazi indie rock to gentle, intimate acoustic numbers to danceable psychedelic synth pop to the diversity of their latest effort, 2023’s My Big Day, which borrows a bit from all their previous experiments.
$35, 8 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston


TUESDAY (3/19/24)

MUSIC

Las Cafeteras
Los Angeles’ Las Cafeteras take an all-embracing approach to Southern Californian Latin American music. Recent track “Cumbia de Mi Barrio” is a fine example, with rapping, folk strumming, spy movie electric guitar, the slightly hint of vintage g-funk synths. Their true talent, however, isn’t to make all of this cohere, but to make it all sound unmistakably like Las Cafeteras.
$28-$35, 8 p.m., Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville


WEDNESDAY (3/20/24)

BOOKS + READINGS

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
This Nigerian author will discuss her first book published in the United States, 2022’s Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions, which follows four girlfriends who form a tight bond at an elite boarding school in Nigeria as they grow up and stake out their places in the world, discovering in the process that the world isn’t quite what they thought.
Free, 7 p.m., Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline

MUSIC

Mahalia
British R&B singer-songwriter Mahalia favors classic style and candid, relatable storytelling over vocal theatrics. She was on the verge of quitting music not long before she won major notice with her 2017 COLORS performance of “Sober.” Her latest album, released last summer, is IRL.
$41.25, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

Josh Kantor’s 7th Inning Stretch
The Red Sox are no ordinary baseball team, so it’s fitting that that Fenway has no ordinary organist—it has Josh Kantor, beloved for his social media request-taking and surprising song selections. He gained greater notice during the lockdown, when he began streaming performances from home.
$20-$30, 7:30 p.m., City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston

DRAG

Sasha Colby
The most recent winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Sasha Colby, who bills herself as “your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen,” is the first trans woman ever to win the coveted title of “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” as well as the first Native Hawaiian. She also has Irish ancestry, which she notably leaned into in an episode of her winning season, lip-syncing to the Cranberries’ “Zombie.”
$35-$50, 8 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

KID-FRIENDLY

Punk Rock Aerobics for Kids
Designed for kids aged six to 10, these recurring Wednesday classes fuse aerobics and punk dancing to create a super fun workout, set to a high-energy rock soundtrack (don’t worry, it’s confirmed G-rated). Founder Hilken Mancini has become something of a punk celeb herself—in 2021, Green Day featured her in their video for “Here Comes The Shock.”
Free, 6 p.m., Curtis Hall, 20 South St., Jamaica Plain


THURSDAY (3/21/24)

MUSIC

INZO
Dubstep warlock INZO makes tracks that are as mystical as they are pounding—he’s the sort of EDM producer who’ll casually toss quotes from British Buddhism popularizer Alan Watts into his beats. He’s here on his ongoing Visionquest tour, from which he’s been sharing updates on his YouTube channel.
$30-$40, 9:30 p.m., Middle East Downstairs, 472-480 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

Cliff Notez
This celebrated local singer-rapper, our 2019 pick for Boston’s Best Musician, employs a kaleidoscopic sound, balancing upbeat elements with pensiveness. They dropped a collection of 10 tracks to Bandcamp last summer, entitled iiN;CASEuFORGET?, but insisted that the release was “not an album.” Whatever it is, it’s good.
$20, 7:30 p.m., Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston

Lætitia Sadier
Best known as a member of Stereolab, French musician Lætitia Sadier has released a handful of solo albums on the iconic American indie label Drag City. Her latest, Rooting for Love, a typically mellow, artsy collection, just dropped in February. Its slightly otherworldly lounge vibes might just get you through the rest of the work week.
$17-$20, 8 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

COMEDY

Kev Herrera
New Yorker Kev Herrera is closing in on two million followers on TikTok, where he posts quick sketches rooted in his life as a dad. In some of the best of these, he ends up in absurd arguments with his wife about things like enlisting the kids to work on a snow day or, in a clever meta move, how to make the video you’re watching.
$30-$40, 7:30 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Maggie Thrash
Novelist Maggie Thrash, known for her graphic memoir of adolescence Honor Girl, has gone text only for her first adult novel, Rainbow Black, about Lacey, a New Hampshire woman whose hippie parents went to jail as targets of Satanic Panic hysteria. Lacey’s life as an adult is surprisingly good—that is, until a small mistake draws out the ghosts of the past.
Free, 7 p.m., Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

Eric Rickstad
This prolific thriller author from Vermont reads from his newest potboiler, the story of a woman, traumatized after her son is injured in a school shooting, who embarks on a vigilante quest to hold powerful men accountable. As the FBI closes in, she begins to wonder if she’s becoming her own sort of monster.
Free, 6 p.m., The Coop, 1400 Mass. Ave., Cambridge


FRIDAY (3/22/24)

MUSIC

Loving
Loving’s indie pop, harkening back to the singer-songwriter era of the 70s, is as gentle as their name implies. On “Medicine,” a standout track from their new album Any Light, they lovingly channel Harry Nilsson’s classic “Everybody’s Talkin’,” updating it with a more contemporary sort of lo-fi melancholy.
$21.50-$26.50, 8 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

Seba Molnar
Local sax player and Charles River Jazz Festival mastermind Seba Molnar stops by Regattabar Friday with singers Debo Ray and Farayi Malek, each of whom is worth the price of admission on her own. For a preview, dig this clip of Molnar letting it rip with Ray at Café 939 in 2022.
$25, 7:30 p.m., Regattabar, 1 Bennett St., Cambridge


SATURDAY (3/23/24)

MUSIC

Juventas New Music Ensemble: The Age of the Rise
Committed to performing and promoting new compositions, this local chamber group will perform a set of works reflecting on climate change. If you’re able to show up early, there’s a panel discussion with the composers ahead of the concert at 6:30 p.m., moderated by Boston Conservatory professor Karen Ruymann.
$35, 8 p.m., Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second St., Cambridge

Beach Weather
Braintree native Nick Santino got his start in the emo-ish 2000s power pop band Rocket to the Moon, but by 2015 he’d pivoted to a hipper sound with a new band, Beach Weather, who scored a hit last year with the slick, low key “Sex, Drugs, Etc.”
$62, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

STORYTELLING

Suitcase Stories
Suitcase Stories gathers immigrants and refugees to tell true and powerful stories of their experiences, unfiltered by political football games or media slants. The performers in Sunday’s lineup, among them Somerville mayor Katjana Ballantyne, come from all over—Greece, India, Armenia, Sudan, Haiti, and elsewhere.
$28, 8 p.m., Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

SHOPPING

Somerville Winter Farmers Market
With many farmers markets in hibernation, this weekly indoor market, with more than 70 vendors offering produce, dairy, meat, pastries, coffee, specialty items, and more, is an excellent cold weather alternative. It runs Saturdays through April 6.
Free, 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville


SUNDAY (3/24/24)

MUSIC

The Last Dinner Party
Known for their debut single “Nothing Matters,” a hit in their U.K. homeland, this all female pop-rock band has a theatrical sound somewhere between the pure arena sugar of ABBA and the literary weirdness of Kate Bush—they even reference Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in a recent video. Is a fashion trend called Elizabethan-core on the way? Time will tell.
$30, 8 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

Family Folk Chorale Celebrates the Music of Brandi Carlile
Hopefully someone has notified Brandi Carlile that “the Boston area’s premier intergenerational chorus” (age range: three to 80) is going to be covering her songs this Sunday, because she’d probably be charmed as heck to know. Family Folk Chorale shows are meant to foster community—come with the family, whoever they are, and sing, dance, and be merry.
$18, 4 p.m., Arlington Town Hall, 730 Mass. Ave., Arlington

COMEDY

Nate Bargatze
Given that his father was a literal clown and professional magician, it’s hard to imagine Nate Bargatze not becoming a comedian, one whose deadpan earnestness is sort of the antithesis of a flashy magic act. In October, he had the privilege of hosting Saturday Night Live. “I’m as shocked as you are that I’m here,” he joked in his opening monologue.
$46.25-$86.25, 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., TD Garden, 100 Legends Way, Boston

WEDDINGS

Boston Weddings’ Bubbly Brunch
So, the thrill of engagement has led to the 10,000 questions about the wedding? Don’t worry, we’ve got you. Sunday’s Bubbly Brunch brings together the city’s top wedding professionals to chat about the hottest trends in every aspect of the nuptial experience—design, destinations, photography, cakes, and more—and right now, there’s a two-for-one offer on tickets.
$32.50-$65, 11 a.m.-2 p.m., InterContinental Hotel, 510 Atlantic Ave., Boston


MONDAY (3/25/24)

MUSIC

Unwound
Although they emerged from Washington state in the grunge era, Unwound was never going to cough up a Ten or Nevermind—they has a looser, noisier, more chaotic and lo-fi sound, and they stuck to it and their indie status throughout the 90s, while many of their peers were signing to the majors. After a 20-year hiatus, they reunited in 2022.
$51, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

MOVIES

Seminar: The Virgin Suicides
She may have been a nepo baby, but Sofia Coppola’s 1999 debut proved she was no mid director. At this talk, Lesley University film professor Ingrid Stobbe will discuss how Coppola took a novel about teenage girls seen through the male gaze and added an extra layer of complexity. It’s followed by a separately ticketed screening of the film.
$27.50, 6:15 p.m., Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline


ART + EXHIBITIONS (Ongoing)

Hallyu! The Korean Wave
It might seem as if South Korea’s global cultural influence—Parasite, Squid Game, a K-pop group visiting the White House—is a recent phenomenon, but, the Museum of Fine Arts hopes to prove with this exhibition that it’s been brewing for years, and that today’s tastemakers have a strong sense of their national artistic history.
$34, Sunday, March 24 through July 28, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Robert Rovenolt: (no regrets)
If you could see the memories and feelings floating through your head—some fleeting, some ruminated on, some in the background, some stuffed down as intrusive—what would they look like? Perhaps something like this set of works by longtime South End resident Robert Rovenolt, exploring what he calls “memory as collage.”
Free, through April 13, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St., Boston

Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.
Drawing from the collections of more than twenty different museums and other institutions, this powerful travelling exhibition displays hundreds of photographs and objects—shoes, uniforms, bits of architecture, even a gas mask used by a camp officer—connected to the most notorious of the Nazi death factories.
$34.95, opens Friday, March 15 through September 2, The Saunders Castle at Park Plaza, 130 Columbus Ave., Boston

LaToya M. Hobbs, “Scene 5: The Studio,” from “Carving Out Time,” 2020–21.

LaToya M. Hobbs: It’s Time
This show collects, for the first time, the complete Carving Out Time series of woodcuts by Baltimore-based artist LaToya M. Hobbs. Depicting a single day in her own life, each panel is dense with the ephemera of identity, showing the various roles she plays as an artist, mother, wife, and teacher.
Free, through July 21, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Noriko Saitō, Japanese, “Sunbeam,” 2002. Ink and color on paper; drypoint with aquatint.

Future Minded: New Works in the Collection
Harvard Arts Museums shows off some of their latest acquisitions, many by living artists, some centuries old, all reflecting shifts in the institution’s views of history and its impact on the conditions of the present. Artists include Jean (Hans) Arp, Edward Mitchell Bannister, Willie Cole, Svenja Deininger, Baldwin Lee, Lucia Moholy, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Noriko Saitō, Melissa Shook, and many others.
Free, through July 21, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Changing Landscapes: An Immersive Journey
The Museum of Science takes you on an interactive, multimedia virtual tour of four UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Giza, Venice, Rapa Nui (better known by its colonial name, Easter Island) and Mesa Verde, highlighting the effects of climate change on each of these important centers of civilization.
$29, Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston

Our Time on Earth
Bringing together 12 installations from around the world, including such exotic experiences as a magnified look at plankton, a dive into the layers of a tree, and an interspecies dinner, this exhibition from London’s Barbican Centre aspires to a future in which humans coexist peacefully with their environment.
$20, through June 9, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Wu Tsang: Of Whales
Worcester native Wu Tsang brings one part of her trilogy inspired by Moby-Dick to the Institute of Contemporary Art with this immersive installation that uses extended reality technology to try to get inside the mind of a sperm whale, creating a “lush, dreamy oceanscape.”
$20, through August 4, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Raqib Shaw: Ballads of East and West
The Gardner Museum casts a major spotlight on stunningly intricate painter Raqib Shaw, a London-based native of the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed Kashmir region whose surreal works have one foot in the imagination and one in socio-political reality.
$20, through May 12, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston

Lorraine O’Grady: Both/And
Wellesley College’s Davis Museum hosts the first major career-spanning exhibition for alum Lorraine O’Grady, a multidisciplinary artist and writer who’s spent decades exploring the construction of Black womanhood, diasporic consciousness, and other socio-political concerns, particularly through the diptych, which she uses to hold and stage the tensions between contradictory ideas and self-concepts.
Free, through June 2, Davis Museum, 106 Central Street, Wellesley

Destiny Doorways
Using botanical imagery to depict the pathways of life, this installation by Mithsuca Berry engages the viewer with opportunities to reflect on where they’ve been and where they’re headed. You’ll get to choose from a variety of media to make your your own art in response, adding it to the chorus of other visitor responses.
$20, through June 15, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Lani Asunción: Duty-Free Paradise
As a third generation Phillipine immigrant raised in Hawaii, Lani Asunción recognized the significance of their Jamaica Plain studio being close to the home of the founder of the Dole, the fruit company closely intertwined with the colonization of Hawaii. This exhibition, bringing an often ignored or buried history to light, is the result of Asunción’s exploration of that connection.
Free, through April 13, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St., Boston

WNDR Museum
This new gallery space in Downtown Crossing 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

Wordplay
The Institute of Contemporary Art has mined its own collection for work highlighting the use of words in visual art, with pieces from Kenturah Davis, Taylor Davis, Joe Wardwell, Rivane Neuenschwander, Shepard Fairey, Jenny Holzer, Glenn Ligon, and more.
$20, through January 5, 2025, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork: Poems of Electronic Air
Spread across two floors of Harvard’s Carpenter Center, indoors and outdoors, Poems of Electronic Air integrates sound picked up from microphones and sent, altered, back into the environment, coat-like sculptures made of wool and silicone, river stones that visitors can walk across, a deflating and inflating bounce house-like structure, and other curiosities.
Free, through April 7, Carpenter Center, Harvard University, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

The Lost Generation: Women Ceramicists and the Cuban Avant-Garde
Boston College’s McMullen Museum explores the unsung work of the women of the Taller de Santiago de las Vegas, a ceramics workshop near Havana, during the Cuban revolutionary era. Their striking modernist designs made a deep impression on a group of much better-known male painters and brought greater prestige to the art of ceramics in Cuba.
Free, through June 2, McMullen Museum of Art, 2101 Comm. Ave., Brighton

Wolf Vostell: Dé-coll/age Is Your Life
Committed to the use of destruction in art making as a means of highlighting the destructiveness in society, Wolf Vostell created a body of work that cried out for peace in the anxious Cold War era. Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum has the largest collection of his work on this side of the world, much of which, including prints, sculptures, films, performance-related items, will be on display here.
Free, through May 5, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Photo by Troy Wade

Matthew Bajor: Interference Patterns
Local artist Matthew Bajor created these three large, colorful, kinetic glass sculptures as a reflection on his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. Entitled Double Diamond, Mingling Memories, and Pixelated Heart, they convey the power of compassion in connecting with those who may no longer remember us or even be able to speak.
Free, through March 20, Harvard Ed Portal, 224 Western Ave., Allston

Picasso: War, Combat, and Revolution
Take a deep dive into the world of Picasso’s immortal and imposing Guernica, one of the great anti-war statements in 20th century art, dense with both pathos and symbolic meaning. Although the painting itself remains in Madrid, you’ll see several drawings and prints from Picasso that express similar themes to the painting.
Free, through May 5, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Day One DNA: 50 Years in Hip-Hop Culture
Featuring more than 200 objects, including studio reels, photos, party fliers, magazines, custom clothing, jewelry, recording equipment, and more from the archives of Ice-T and DJ Afrika Islam, this show looks at hip hop history both from a personal perspective and in its wider cultural context.
Free, through May 31, Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, 102 Mount Auburn St., Cambridge

Digital Iridescence: Jell-O in New Media
You read that right: this exhibition features the work of five artists using gelatin as a medium, exploring its jiggly, tissue-like nature, its animal derivation, the distortions of light it’s capable of producing, and its history and marketing as a staple treat for homemakers for over a century.
$27, through March 24, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

The Myth of Normal
Featuring the work of MassArt alumni to celebrate the school’s 150th anniversary, this multimedia exhibition examines what happens when dysfunctional modes of thoughts and behavior become norms, and how the self-expressive potential of art can provide relief from the sometimes-damaging pressure to be “normal.”
Free, through May 19, MassArt Art Museum, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston

Surveillance: From Vision to Data
If you’ve ever seen an ad online for something you only mentioned in conversation, you know you’re being watched—and your phone is just one of the more recent tools of the trade. This exhibition examines some historic instruments of surveillance, showing how they’ve been used, in the eerie words of its synopsis, “to transform individuals and landscapes into data.”
Free, through June 22, Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, Harvard University, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge

Resa Blatman’s Beauty and the Beasties from “Bats!” at the Peabody Essex Museum. / Photo courtesy of Resa Blatman

“Bats!”
The Peabody Essex Museum would certainly win the award for Salem’s Best Halloween Museum Exhibition (if only it existed!) with its latest extravaganza. For starters, the PEM has gathered various pop-culture artifacts and artworks celebrating our favorite winged mammals by contemporary talents such as Somerville painter Resa Blatman and Argentine papercraftsman Juan Nicolás Elizalde. But the exhibition also has a natural-history element to it, stressing how bats are, in fact, indicator species that reveal the health of the environment around us. Best of all, visitors get to meet a small colony of real live Egyptian fruit bats, who are as adorable as they are fascinating. —MATTHEW REED BAKER
$20 (non-member general admission), through July 28, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Shehuo: Community Fire
Since 2007, Chinese photographer Zhang Xiao has periodically documented the celebration of Shehuo, a spring festival in rural Northern China, showing its regional quirks, handmade props that double as family heirlooms, and its transformation over the years into a commercialized spectacle for tourists.
$15, through April 14, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 11 Divinity Ave., Cambridge

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UPCOMING

2024

April 2024

May 2024

  • Sheer Mag with Pile at the Crystal Ballroom (55 Davis Sq., Somerville).

Want to suggest an event? Email us.