Things to Do This Week in Boston

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MULTIPLE DAYS
Ongoing through Monday, May 13 (and Beyond)

THEATER

Mermaid Hour
Moonbox Productions returns with David Valdes’ tale of Pilar and Bird, uncertain parents to a trans middle schooler, and the kid herself, Vi, who’s impatient for them to get on the level about everything—but equally impatient to win the attention of her crush and make a name for herself on social media.
$45-$55, through May 19, Arrow Street Arts, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

Orpheus in the Overworld
Fresh Ink Theater presents a queer spin on the enduring ancient Greek myth of the original tortured poet (actually, the original poet, period), Orpheus, and his beloved, Eurydice, in a world populated by “tomboys, fairies, gods, and god-ish bartenders.”
$10-$35, through May 11, Black Box Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston

A Strange Loop
The Huntington Theater and Front Porch Arts Collective join forces for this local production of Michael R. Jackson’s brilliantly meta, Pulitzer-winning musical about Usher, a writer who’s writing about a writer writing about a writer. Its Broadway version won the 2022 Tony for Best Musical.
$25-$80, through May 25, Virginia Wimberly Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston

Hadestown
Singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell’s musical adaptation of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice won eight 2019 Tonys, including Best Musical. Not satisfied with simple fantasy, Mitchell created a version of the myth with contemporary political and ecological resonances. The story may be familiar, but you’ve never seen it like this.
$63-$317.75, Tuesday through Sunday, April 23-28, Boch Center Wang Theater, 270 Tremont St., Boston

The Drowsy Chaperone
Lyric Stage brings back this meta-musical in which a theater nerd known only as Man in Chair annotates an imaginary, trope-stuffed 1920s musical—his favorite cast recording—as it’s being brought to life for the audience. It’s directed and choreographed by Larry Sousa, with musical direction by Matthew Stern.
$30-$85, through May 12, Lyric Stage, 140 Clarendon St., Boston

DANCE

Boston Ballet: Spring Experience
Experience a trio of contemporary ballets: William Forsythe’s boundary-pushing Blake Works III (The Barre Project), created for the Boston Ballet two years ago; Jiří Kylián’s elegant meditation Bella Figura; and an untitled world premiere from Ken Ossola, inspired by Michelangelo’s unfinished Prisoners series.
$25-$205, Thursday, May 9 through May 19, Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston

Boston Dance Theater
Co-directed by founder Jessie Jeanne Stinnett and fellow choreographer Itzik Galili, Boston Dance Theater will perform Marco Goecke’s Peekaboo, Firebird, and Äffi (the latter two U.S. premieres), Galili’s If As If (also a U.S. premiere), and Alessandro Sousa Pereira’s Awa and Delicate Blue (both world premieres).
$48, Friday and Saturday, May 10-11, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

DANCE NOW Boston
This two-part series brings together the dance worlds of New York City and Boston. This weekend is part one, with works from NYC’s The Bang Group, who’ll appear again next weekend, plus Jimena Bermejo, Lynn Modell, Marcus Schulkind, and Tony Williams.
$25, Saturday, May 11 through May 19, The Dance Complex, 536 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

COMEDY

Gianmarco Soresi
“I’m what’s known as an extraverted introvert,” Gianmarco Soresi explains at the top of a 2021 Comedy Central clip. “When I’m talking, I’m very extraverted, but when you’re talking, I’d rather be alone.” His gregarious style belies a dark streak, the two working together to create an act that’s fun and grim at the same time.
$33, Friday and Saturday, May 10-11, Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

MOVIES

Aggro Dr1ft
From the abnormal mind of notorious director Harmony Korine comes this action-packed flick that follows a Miami hitman as he pursues his latest target. In a striking move, Korine shot everything with a thermal lens, lending a surreal, rainbow-hued look to this tale of a world that knows nothing of the law.
$14.49, opens Friday, May 10, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

I Saw the TV Glow
Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, who disturbingly depicted the intersection between adolescence and online culture in 2021’s We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, is back with this vivid, ’90s-set follow-up, which continues their exploration of youth, media obsession, and the boundaries between fiction and reality.
$13.50-$15.50, opens Friday, May 10, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Long Live Film! The Art of Collecting
This eclectic series pays tribute to film collectors both well-known and obscure, with Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, the new documentary Film is Dead. Long Live Film!, a rare 35mm print of the Italian horror classic Zombie, the salacious 1965 flick Bad Girls Go to Hell, a gruesome Mother’s Day pick in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and more.
$12.50-$14.50, Thursday through Tuesday, May 9-14, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Independent Film Festival Boston
This annual survey of cinema’s freshest voices and visions ends Wednesday; remaining highlights include Sing Sing, the story of a incarcerated theater troupe, Handling the Undead, a different sort of zombie movie from Norway, and Thelma, in which a scammer’s phone call serves as the catalyst for the 93-year-old woman’s adventure.
$10-$20 (badges also available), through Wednesday, May 8, various venues, Somerville, Brookline, and Cambridge

Challengers
Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) is back with this tale of Tashi (Zendaya), an injured tennis wunderkind. These days, the closest she can get to the court is coaching her husband, Art (Mike Faist). The tension is more than athletic: Art’s next challenger, Patrick, is his ex-bestie—and Tashi’s ex-lover.
$12.99-$16.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Sasquatch Sunset
The brotherly directing team of David and Nathan Zellner (Damsel) provide a comic but kind of deep glimpse into the lives of a family of bigfoots (Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough. Christophe Zajac-Denek and Nathan Zellner)—and it turns out that at the end of the day, in ways flattering and not-so-flattering, they aren’t so different from us.
$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

La Chimera
Brought to us by Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher, La Chimera travels back to the 80s to tell the story of Arthur (Josh O’Connor), a British man who runs with a squad of tomb raiders in Italy, all the while pining for his disappeared love, Beniamina (Yile Vianello), whose mother (the great Isabella Rossellini) awaits her return with a quasi-religious fervor.
$13.50-$15.50, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Civil War
Dispensing with any tedious backstory, director Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) throws his audience right into the middle of a full-blown 21^st century war between an America led by an authoritarian president (Nick Offerman) and a handful of breakaway states. We experience the action through the eyes of journalists, including photographer Lee, played by Kirsten Dunst.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

The Beast
Inspired by a Henry James novella but set 20 years in the future, the new film from French writer-director Bertrand Bonello images a world where technology has enabled us to purge our genetic code of the troubling residue of past lives—23andMe doesn’t sound so impressive now, does it?
$13.50-$15.50, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Wicked Little Letters
Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley star, respectively, as Edith, old-fashioned townie, and Rose, a spunky Irish newcomer, in this period comedy mystery, set in an English coastal town about a century ago. When an apparent prankster starts sending everyone obscene letters, everyone suspects Rose—until evidence suggests that the truth is not so simple.
$13.50-$15.50, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Monkey Man
Dev Patel co-wrote, directed and stars in this intense action thriller about a professional fight-thrower in India who transforms into a righteous vigilante, determined to avenge his mother’s murder, after taking inspiration from the story of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman.
$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.
$22.25, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

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

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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WEDNESDAY (5/8/24)

MUSIC

Chastity Belt
Indie-pop quartet Chastity Belt released their first album since before the pandemic, sardonically titled Live Laugh Love, at the end of March. The band follows Lana Del Rey in obliquely referencing a popular conspiracy theory on the record’s brooding latest single, “Chemtrails.”
$18, 8:30 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

COMEDY

A Tale of Two Titties
Although its title might suggest a burlesque tribute to Charles Dickens, this one-woman show is actually about comedian Julia Johns’ battle with breast cancer—a considerably less saucy subject, but one she approaches with remarkable humor, driven by a conviction that “even in the darkest of times, there’s always room for laughter.”
$10-$15, 7:30 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

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THURSDAY (5/9/24)

MUSIC

Hatsune Miku Expo
Though she “performs” onscreen as a manga-style 16-year-old with bright-blue hair, Hatsune Miku really began life in 2007 as a piece of vocal synthesis software created by the Japanese company Crypton Future Media that lets music fans make their computer sing. Soon enough, the software became personified by this virtual cartoon singer, who is as joyously buoyant as she is fake. She’s also now an international phenomenon, “touring” the world with a live band in front of packed audiences. —MATTHEW REED BAKER
$90-$600, 8 p.m., Boch Center Wang Theater, 270 Tremont St., Boston

COMEDY

Ahren Belisle
Unable to speak due to cerebral palsy, Canadian comic Ahren Belisle uses his phone, exploiting the gap between his charming expressions and its robotic voice for maximum amusement. He’s made several appearances on America’s Got Talent, but he’s also held his own in the considerably less family-friendly setting of Kill Tony.
$30, 8 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

FOOD + DRINK

The WhiskyX
This traveling whisky fest include a performance by righteous throwback soul act St. Paul & The Broken Bones, whose barrel-aged sound will pair perfectly with the 48 internationally-source brands whisky on offer—scotch, rye, bourbon, Irish, Canadian, Japanese, and more.
$75, 7 p.m., Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Brighton

SPORTS

Haymakers for Hope Rock ‘N Rumble XIII
Proceeds from this set of boxing matches—all between non-boxers who engaged in four months of training specifically for this event—will go to toward every aspect of fight against cancer, from research to assisting survivors.
$110.75-$195.25, 7:30 p.m., MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Joan Nathan
One of the premier specialists in Jewish cuisine, Joan Nathan is here to talk discuss the cookbook-memoir hybrid My Life in Recipes: Food, Family, and Memories. Nathan is best known for 1994’s Jewish Cooking in America, which was adapted for a PBS series of the same name.
$12-$50, 6 p.m., Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

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FRIDAY (5/10/24)

MUSIC

Alice Merton
This pop singer-songwriter’s restless upbringing, which left her with citizenship no less than four different countries, inspired her bluesy hit debut single, “No Roots”. In March, she released “Pick Me Up”, whose heavy bounce calls to mind the indie dance bangers of the 2010s.
$25, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

Freddie Gibbs & Madlib
Given his massive underground cred, it was a bit surprising when Madlib began making music with the more mainstream Freddie Gibbs. The result, including two albums, 2014’s Piñata and 2019’s Bandana, was no sellout exercise, but a unique mix of sensibilities that brought out a different side of both participants.
$55-$87.30, 8 p.m., MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston

Chicano Batman
This Los Angeles trio returned at the end of March with Notebook Fantasy, 12 tracks of slick, funky, slightly trippy party rock, with a couple of dreamier breaks thrown in for good measure. The band’s sense of fun is evident in the campy video for the single “Fly”.
$41.25, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

COMEDY

Anthony Devito
Anthony Devito tells it like it is, even to his own audience: “You have like, hostage energy,” he says to his seemingly nervous crowd in a recent Don’t Tell Comedy clip. For the critical youth of social media, he has similarly direct words: “On paper, you’re like, ‘Mental health is important,’ but then, on TikTok, you’re like ‘Die, cringe fascist!’”
$22.50, 7:30 p.m., White Bull Tavern, 1 Union St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Doris Kearns Goodwin
The popular historian (Team of Rivals, No Ordinary Time, The Bully Pulpit) turns her lens toward her own life in her new memoir An Unfinished Love Story, reflecting on her and her husband Dick’s work for the Kennedys and Lyndon Johnson, which gave them a front row seat for one of the most consequential decades in American politics.
$12-$42, 7 p.m., First Paris Church, 1446 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

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SATURDAY (5/11/24)

MUSIC

Somerville Porchfest
More than 400 mostly musical acts of all sorts are listed for this year’s Porchfest, playing across three time slots, moving from northwest to southeast across the fine city of Somerville. If there isn’t a sound you like emitting from at least one backyard on Saturday, it’s probable that you just don’t enjoy music.
Free, 12 p.m.-6 p.m., various locations, Somerville

Sawyer Hill
Like fellow viral sensation David Kushner, singer-songwriter Sawyer Hill packs a deep baritone voice and a flair for musical drama. Hill’s more of a rocker, though, and more of a feelings-having dude than tortured soul. His 2023 breakthrough track was “Look at the Time,” a fine slice of interpersonal angst.
$16, 8:30 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

JMC Presents: Proof of Concept
This well-rounded showcase of local up-and-comers in pop and hip hop, including Timi O, l.ucas, Jiida, Rilla Force, and Faybee, is just a small sample of the superabundant talent grinding away in Boston’s contemporary music scene.
$15-$18, 8 p.m., Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

FANDOM

Caroline Rhea and Melissa Joan Hart: I Identify as a Witch
Fans of the 90s teen sitcom Sabrina the Teenage Witch will get a kick of nostalgia from this double appearance by Caroline “Aunt Hilda” Rhea, who played the funny man to Beth Broderick’s more zipped-up Aunt Zelda, and star Melissa Joan Hart, who played the titular Archie Comics mainstay as a hip misfit who just happened to have magical powers.
$39-$140, 7 p.m., Chevalier Theater, 30 Forest St., Medford

FESTIVALS

Watch City Steampunk Festival
If you think the Gilded Age would’ve been a lot cooler if there’d been steam powered androids, cool googles for everyone, and widespread airship travel—and really, who doesn’t?—this is the fest for you, loaded with entertaining oddities, from bands to puppet shows to circus arts to robot battles, as well a slate of unusual vendors.
Free, 10 a.m.-5:15 p.m., Waltham Common, 610 Main St., Waltham

KID-FRIENDLY

Adventure Improv
Introduce kids to the fun of improv at this show, where performers will take audience suggestions and make songs and scenarios out of whole cloth. If sitting still isn’t your kids’ thing, don’t worry— mini-games and other challenges will engage them more directly, and they might get to join the performers on stage.
$15-$20, 2 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

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SUNDAY (5/12/24)

MUSIC

Frankie Cosmos
The New York indie darling known in ordinary life as Greta Kline is still riding on  2022’s Inner World Peace, which provided some moodier twists on her lighter-than-air pop, whose bread and butter has long been a mix of sweet melodies and more complex lyrical sentiments.
$20-$25, 8 p.m., Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

COMEDY

Alyce Chan
As something of a specialist in the comedy of parenthood, Boston Comedy Festival finalist Alyce Chan is a natural pick for a Mother’s Day brunch. Her Instagram account has amassed closed to 240,000 followers with all-too-relatable content like this clever reel, depicting that moment when the to-do list gets one item too long.
$30, 12 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

SHOPPING

SoWa Open Market
This popular Sunday event features dozens of vendors selling their own jewelry, clothing, household items, art, and more, plus special performances and events, a chance to check out the open studios of dozens of local artists, and a rotating selection of food trucks. It runs every Sunday through October 27.
Free, 11 a.m-4 p.m., 500 Harrison Ave., Boston

MOVIES

Petite Maman
French director Céline Sciamma followed Portrait of a Lady on Fire with this 2021 fantasy about a girl who, through a mysterious time warp in the woods, gets to meet her mother as a child, gaining a completely new perspective on their relationship.
$15, 2:30 p.m., Museum of Fine 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

OUTDOORS

Lilac Sunday
Thousands crowd Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum annually to see its 407 species of lilacs in full bloom, as well as to take advantage of the sole day that the Arborteum allows picnicking. There will also be special tours, dance performances, a meditation station, and commissioned chalk art.
Free, 10 a.m.-3 p.m., Arnold Arboretum, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain

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MONDAY (5/13/24)

MUSIC

Levitation Room
Starting off in the mid-2010s as a far-out throwback to 60s psychedelic rock, Levitation Room has stayed fairly true to their canonical timeline, so that today, a decade into their career, they appear to be broadcasting from the 70s, from the touches of soul, funk, and space rock on their new album, Strange Weather, to its fabulous Hipgnosis-meets-Dalí cover art.
$17, 7:30 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

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ART + EXHIBITIONS (Ongoing)

Firelei Báez
Back in 2021, the Dominican-born Firelei Báez wowed visitors to the Institute of Contemporary Art’s Watershed, where she filled the huge East Boston warehouse space with a dreamlike installation combining West African indigo printing and Caribbean Sea imagery with a massive replica of the ruins of Haiti’s Sans-Souci Palace. Now she has her first museum retrospective at the ICA celebrating her paintings, drawings, and mixed-media works. The pieces, which meld Afro-Caribbean, folklore, sci-fi, and historical themes, may be smaller scale, but they pack the same visual and conceptual punch. —MATTHEW REED BAKER
through September 2, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Dress Up
With more than 100 pieces of clothing, jewelry, accessories, and photos and illustrations going back more than a century, this show examines the ever-shifting meaning of fashion in our lives as a mode of both personal and political expression.
$27, through September 2, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Songs for Modern Japan
The Museum of Fine Arts casts a spotlight on an obscure artistic subject: the covers of Japanese sheet music collections in the first half of the 20th century, which provided opportunities for graphic designers to explore popular movements like Art Nouveau, and, later on, served as real estate for imperial propaganda.
$27, through September 2, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Framing Freedom: The Harriet Hayden Albums
Take a unique look at the lives of Boston’s Black abolitionist community through these selections from the photo albums of Harriet Bell Hayden, who escaped from enslavement in Kentucky with her family in 1844. Their new home on Beacon Hill served as a stop on the Underground Railroad.
$10, through June 22, Boston Athenaeum, 10½ Beacon Street, Boston

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, through July 28, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

See also: The MFA’s “Korean Wave” Exhibition Is Thrilling

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, through September 2, The Saunders Castle at Park Plaza, 130 Columbus Ave., Boston

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

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UPCOMING

2024

May 2024

• May 13, 2024-May 14, 2024. Mannequin Pussy at the Sinclair (52 Church St., Cambridge).

• Tuesday, May 28.
  • Kathleen Hanna: Rebel Girl Book Tour at the Wilbur Theater (246 Tremont St., Boston). [Info]
  • Shannon and the Clams at the Sinclair (52 Church St., Cambridge).

June 2024

• Wednesday, June 5. Of Montreal at the Sinclair (52 Church St., Cambridge).
• June 8. Boston Kids Comics Fest returns with another round of workshops and roundtables that aim to foster the next generation of cartoonists and comic-book illustrators. This one-day event, held at Northeastern’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex on June 8, will feature lectures by graphic novelists who are well-known stars to any schoolkid these days, such as Bad Kitty’s Nick Bruel, Amulet’s Kazu Kibuishi, and Lauren Tarshis of the popular I Survived series. Best of all, the festival has set aside quiet spaces, so your budding Stan Lee or Alison Bechdel can get some creative work done. bostonkidscomicsfest.org. —Matthew Reed Baker
• June 10. Allie X at the Sinclair (52 Church St., Cambridge).

July 2024

• July 17, 2024. The 50th anniversary of Best of Boston Soirée @ Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Boston.

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