Things to Do This Week in Boston

Jump to: | Sunday, April 28 | Monday, April 29 | Tuesday, April 30 | Wednesday, May 1 | Thursday, May 2 | Friday, May 3 | Saturday, May 4 | Sunday, May 5 | Monday, May 6 | Art & Exhibitions | Upcoming |

Want to suggest an event? Email us.

MULTIPLE DAYS
Ongoing through Monday, May 6 (and Beyond)

CONVENTIONS

Boston Outdoor Expo
The summer outdoor sports season is fast approaching—are you stocked up? Do you know where you’re going? Whether you’re about cycling, kayaking, camping, hiking, climbing, all of the above, or anything else, you’ll find plenty of inspiration here, with more than 30 speakers, I formative panels, showcases of the latest gear, and more.
$15-$25, Saturday and Sunday, April 27-28, Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, 415 Summer St., Boston

FESTIVALS

Japan Festival Boston
Boston Common transforms into a temporary Little Tokyo this weekend, with traditional and contemporary dance and music performances, lots of food, workshops and cultural demonstrations highlighting tea ceremonies, origami, Japanese cards and board games, and even cosplay, plus kids’ activities and vendors of all sorts.
Free, Saturday and Sunday, April 27-28, Boston Common, 16 Charles St., Boston

ART + MUSEUMS

Art in Bloom
One of the prettiest times to visit the MFA is this annual celebration of spring, pairing custom floral arrangements with 45 pieces of art. The arrangements, bringing the essential colors of two-dimension paintings into the three-dimensional space, add a striking vivacity to the galleries.
$27, Friday through Sunday, April 26-28, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Boston Design Week
Landscapes, architecture, fashion, industry, sustainability, art—if it has to do with design, it’s probably represented at some point in this 13-day smorgasbord of events—more than 70 in all, involving some of the area’s best-known institutions.
Prices vary by event, through May 5, various locations, Boston area

FOOD + DRINK

The Boston Sauce Party
The name of this event is a little coy, but yes, they do mean hot sauce, and with 24 artisan producers participating, there’s going to be a lot to try. For the boldest capsaicin enthusiasts, there will be three fearsome-sounding competitions: the Hot Wing Eating Challenge, the Spiked Pizza Eating Challenge, and (most fearsome-sounding of all) the Marshmallows from Hell Challenge.
$10, Saturday and Sunday, April 27-28, Harpoon Brewery, 306 Northern Ave., Boston

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

Top 50 Best Restaurants in Boston

THEATER

Clue
An adaptation of a movie adapted from a board game, Clue brings all the quirky characters and comic intrigue of the 80s cult hit (without which the Knives Out films are unthinkable) to the stage, with great fidelity to the source material.
$45-$265, Tuesday through Sunday, April 30-May 5, Emerson Colonial Theater, 106 Boylston St., Boston

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

OPERA

Don Giovanni
Using period instruments and the original score from the 1787 Prague premiere, Boston Baroque presents Mozart’s ever-popular opera, in which a womanizing schemer gets his comeuppance. The Don is played by Sidney Outlaw, who’s got to have one of the coolest names in the opera game.
$30-$210, Thursday through Sunday, April 25-28, Huntington Theater, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston

DANCE

Ballet Banquet
City Ballet of Boston and youth dancers from the Tony Williams Dance Center perform Gianni Di Marco’s truncated version of Sleeping Beauty, Morgan Brown Sanborn’s energetic Tableau, Marcus Schulkind’s solo piece Allemande, Tony Williams’ Baba Ghanoush, and Ben’s Trumpet, a jazz ballet inspired by the children’s book of the same name.
$20-$35, Friday through Sunday, April 26-28, Strand Theater, 543 Columbia Rd., Dorchester

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Currently directed by Robert Battle, this storied New York company will perform a few different sets of works across this four-day stint at the Wang, including a tribute to former artistic director Judith Jamison by Ronald K. Brown and whole program of works by Ailey. Each set will end, as per tradition, with Ailey’s masterpiece, Revelations.
$29-$99, Thursday through Sunday, May 2-5, Boch Center Wang Theater, 270 Tremont St., Boston

COMEDY

Vlad Caamaño
This New York comic has a cool but animated style, acting out his bemused observations of everything from parallel parking to his family’s urban anxieties with casual precision. You may have caught him on TV in roles on Superstore, the Marvel series Runaways, or Tommy.
$33, Friday and Saturday, May 3-4, 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

Days of Heaven
Terrence Malick’s 1978 masterpiece, starring Richard Gere, Linda Manz, and Brooke Adams as farm workers in the early years of the 20th century, newly arrived in the Texas panhandle from the big city, just got the 4K restoration treatment, which means its breathtaking cinematography looks better than ever.
$12.50-$14.50, Friday through Sunday, April 26-28, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Riddle of Fire
With the next season of Stranger Things still pretty far off, this adventure from writer-director Weston Razooli, starring a cast of kids but geared toward adults, might be just the thing to tide you over. It’s not a sci-fi/fantasy joint, but it strongly evokes movies of the 80s, particularly The Goonies, while hiding a different resonance beneath its surface nostalgia.
$12.50-$14.50, Thursday through Sunday, April 25-28, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

One from the Heart: Reprise
In addition to getting the 4K restoration treatment, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1982 film One from the Heart, now includes six additional minutes of footage. Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest star as a recently separated couple, each looking for a new awakening on the Las Vegas strip. Tom Waits composed part of the soundtrack.
$12-$16, Saturday and Sunday, April 27-28, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

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

---

Want to suggest an event? Email us.

---

SUNDAY (4/28/24)

MUSIC

Joey Alexander Trio
A native of Bali, Indonesia, Grammy-nominated jazz piano prodigy Joey Alexander was a star from his debut album, 2015’s My Favorite Things. Here’s the tween Alexander performing his cool, bluesy rendition of the Rogers and Hammerstein standard. He’s only gotten more skilled since those days, even if he’s still too young to order a drink at an American bar.
$45-$120, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., Scullers Jazz Club, 400 Soldiers Field Rd., Allston

Oneohtrix Point Never
One of Boston’s great contributions to electronic music (his odd moniker is actually a joking reference to the local adult contemporary FM station Magic 106.7), Daniel Lopatin unveiled his latest album, Again, this past September, framing it, curiously, as “a speculative autobiography.” Whatever that means, the album is another sonically rich journey through realms of beauty and noise.
$35, 8 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

FOOD + DRINK

Big Queer Food Fest
Eight top-notch local LGBTQ+ chefs will share their delicious art at this event, hosted by Chopped judge Tiffani Faison, our 2022 pick for Best Chef. She’ll be joined by Tatiana Rosana (Para Maria), Kareem Queeman (Mr. Bake Sweets), Michele Ragussis (Gedney Farm), Robert Gonzalez (Aatma Restaurant, Fuji), and Karen Akunowicz (Fox & Knife, Bar Volpe), and a couple others. Drinks will be provided by SUPERGAY Vodka and Provincetown Brewery.
$50, 5 p.m., High Street Place, 100 High St, Boston

---

MONDAY (4/29/24)

MUSIC

Breland
Bro country singers have been “rapping” for years, but Breland offered a more direct fusion of rap and country his 2019 hit “My Truck.” His bread and butter is the more full-on pop country of songs like “Cowboy Don’t,”  offering a fresh perspective in a genre that loves its formulas. Who would guess he’s from New Jersey?
$20, 8:30 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

---

TUESDAY (4/30/24)

MUSIC

Sum 41
Though it’s a common joke that 90s and 2000s pop punk was overwhelmed by bands with numbers in their names, only two really mattered: Blink-182 and this Canadian quintet, whose catchy hooks and juvenile charm were more than a match for their Californian counterparts. This is (supposedly) their final tour; they dropped their epic final LP, Heaven :x: Hell, in 2022.
$55-$117.40, 7 p.m., MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston

---

WEDNESDAY (5/1/24)

MUSIC

Ty Segall
Ty Segall’s noisy, lo-fi, punky take on classic psychedelic and garage rock, disseminated in a dizzying series of 2010s albums, seems to have launched a thousand long-haired party bands in its wake. His fifteenth album, Three Bells, dropped in January to a warm reception, demonstrating he’s still one of GOATs of his generations in that perrenial genre.
$30, 8 p.m. Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

MULTIMEDIA

ECLIPTIC
Nightingale Vocal Ensemble and Juventas New Music Ensemble, local groups dedicated to new music, team up for this special concert at the Museum of Science’s Charles Hayden Planetarium, accompanied by a special planetarium show. In addition to several in-house works, they’ll be performing Aaron Copland’s cosmological choral piece In the Beginning.
$15, 7:30 p.m., Museum of Science, 1 Science Park, Boston

COMEDY

Emma Willmann
Self-described as “perhaps one of the only dyslexic-gender-wiggly-comics-with-ADHD from Blue Hill, Maine,” New York comic Emma Willmann played Beth on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, among other TV roles. In this recent Don’t Tell Comedy clip, she jokes about the awkwardness of having the same taste in women as her father: “Every time I’ve introduced him to a girlfriend, he’s been like ‘Nice.’”
$25-$30, 7 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

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, 5pm, Play Union, Union Square, Somerville

---

THURSDAY (5/2/24)

MUSIC

Giggs
Marked out by his breathy, relaxed delivery, Giggs is one of the U.K.’s best known rappers. His success hasn’t quite translated to North America, but he has some famous admirers, including Drake, who featured him on the 2017 track “KMT.” His latest track is the twinkly, chilled-out Hallelujah.
$42.50, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

COMEDY

Corinne Fisher
On the comedy radar since her 2010 one woman show I Stalk You, New York comic Corinne Fisher is best known today for Guys We Fucked, her popular podcast with Krystyna Hutchinson. The pair also released a full-length comedy special in 2021. You can expect some candid tales of romantic misadventure at this solo outing.
$33, 8 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

ART + MUSEUMS

Somerville Open Studios
Over the years, Somerville has become one of the Boston area’s artsier spots, and this annual weekend gives you the chance to meet dozens of the city’s artists and check out their work in its natural environment—the studio. This map shows all the participants’ locations; swing by the First Look Exhibit for samples to help plan your route.
Free, Saturday and Sunday, May 4-5, various locations, Somerville

FOOD + DRINK

YUM: A Taste of Immigrant City
Ah, the eternal problem of wanting to go out to eat in a great food town, but not being able to decide just which cuisine to go with. On Thursday, at least, you can come to this Somerville event and get a little of everything, as well as hear from local immigrant chefs who made it.
$40, 6:30 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

---

FRIDAY (5/3/24)

MUSIC

R.A.P. Ferreira
Although he hails from Kenosha, Wisconsin, alt rapper R.A.P. Ferreira is no stranger to New England, having spent a good deal of his childhood in Saco, Maine. His style is emphatic, allusive, and linguistically empowered—“My vocabulary’s my most powerful weaponry,” he declares on recent track “47 rockets taped to my chair.”
$20, 7 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

Ra Ra Riot
Ra Ra Riot’s elegant but propulsive, indie pop helped them form bonds with fellow travelers like Death Cab for Cutie and Vampire Weekend; the letter’s Rostam Batmanglij has produced a couple of their tracks. Over the years, their music has grown slicker without losing its emotional intimacy. The band has yet to release a follow-up to their 2019 LP, Superbloom.
$29.50, 7 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Amy Tan
The author of The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter stops in to discuss her latest book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, a memoir told through musings, journal entries, and sketches detailing Tan’s engagements with the natural world, particularly her birding hobby, which she took up as a grounding activity in the wake of the 2016 election.
$12-$42, 7 p.m., First Parish Church, 1446 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge

---

SATURDAY (5/4/24)

MUSIC

TWRP
With their vintage kids’ TV show costumes and fanciful backstory, this Canadian band might feel like a novelty act, but their fun, funky synth pop, which often sounds something like Electric Light Orchestra crossed with classic Michael Jackson, is no joke. Who else in 2024 could pen such an upbeat tribute to the Internet?
$36-$104, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

Black Kray
A not-always-acknowledged influence on SoundCloud rap, Black Kray has stuck to a goth persona uncommon in hip hop. For Kray, goth is less about ruined castles and vampires than the dark night of the soul, with noisy, disorienting beats and a muttering cadence combining in an endless exorcism of bad vibes.
$34.55, 7 p.m., Big Night Live, 110 Causeway St., Boston

DANCE

Red Bull Dance Your Style East USA
Witness some of the east coast’s most talented dancers go head-to-head at this mixed-style dance competition. For a taste of the action, check out this clip from the 2023 finals, featuring champion dancer Wackxxxy—the first woman ever to win top honors—and her final boss, Gio.
$20, 7 P.M., Citizens House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston

FESTIVALS

Wake Up the Earth Festival
Celebrated since 1979 to honor the successful campaign against a stretch of I-95 invading the neighborhood, the Wake Up the Earth Festival includes multiple solar-powered stages of diverse live music, dancing, circus arts, a pair of homespun parades, vendors, kids’ activities, and more fun.
Free, 12 p.m.-6p.m., Southwest Corridor Park, 122 Boylston St., Jamaica Plain

FOOD + DRINK

Rhythm N’ Spice Hot Sauce Fest
Recovered from last week’s hot sauce fest at Harpoon Brewery? You’d better be, because here’s another one at the Foundry, featuring an international sampling of sauces (not all of them insanely hot), as well as live music, salsa lessons, a “Kids & Culture zone,” and more. Swing for a VIP ticket to try some special spicy cocktails.
$15-$45, 12 p.m.-4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m., The Foundry, 101 Rogers St., Cambridge

---

SUNDAY (5/5/24)

MUSIC

CSS
Dance-rock powerhouse CSS were one of the few Brazilian bands to break into the British and American indie consciousness in the 2000s—their song “Alala” was even included with Microsoft’s ill-fated iPod competitor, the Zune. They haven’t an album in over a decade, but they did re-emerge in 2023 as guests on the fun Karen Jonz track “Coocoocrazy.”
$25, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

Sheer Mag
As much as they throw back to the 70s, Sheer Mag never feel mired in rote nostalgia, and that’s mostly due to the passionate caterwauling of lead singer Tina Halladay, which belongs more to 21^st century lo-fi garage punk than vintage arena rock. If you have time for just one track, make it “Moonstruck”—but you might want more.
$20, 8 p.m., Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

FESTIVALS

Harvard Square Mayfair
Packed with live music and dance, food, beer, crafts vendors, and more, Mayfair takes over a good chunk of Harvard Square every year, with participation from a plethora of local establishments. For the second year, there’s even a festival-within-the-festival, showcasing Asian street food and music.
Free, 11 a.m.-6 p.m., various locations, Harvard Square, Cambridge

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

---

MONDAY (5/6/24)

MUSIC

Norah Jones
The great crossover success story of 2000s jazz, Norah Jones became ubiquitous with her breezily melancholy 2002 debut single “Don’t Know Why.” If she feels like a one hit wonder in retrospect, it’s only because she went on to a more ordinary level of success. Her soulful latest album, Visions, co-produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, appeared in March.
$61.50-$526.50, 8 p.m., MGM Music Hall at Fenway, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Mona Awad
Canadian novelist Mona Awad’s second novel, Bunny, is seen as a touchstone for the “dark academia” aesthetic and will soon be made into a film. Her most recent work, Rogue, a bit of comic horror about grief and an evil spa, is now out in paperback; she’ll discuss it here with Laura Zigman.
$5-$29, 6 p.m.., Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

---

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, Saturday, April 13 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

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, 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

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

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 20^th 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

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

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

Want to suggest an event? Email us.

---

UPCOMING

2024

April 2024

• April 18, 2024. Cypress Hill, Pharcyde, and Souls of Mischief at Roadrunner. [Info]
• April 26-27, 2024. The Town and the City Festival, Lowell, Mass.
  • Robyn Hitchcock, Darlingside, Ryan Montbleau, Orbit, and more. [Info]

May 2024

• Sunday, May 5. Sheer Mag with Pile at the Crystal Ballroom (55 Davis Sq., Somerville).
  • CSS at the Sinclair (52 Church St., Cambridge).
• May 8. Chastity Belt at the Sinclair (52 Church St., Cambridge).
• May 9. 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. Wang Theatre (270 Tremont St., Boston). bochcenter.org.
• Saturday, May 11. PorchFest Somerville 2024. [Info]
• Sunday, May 12. Frankie Cosmos at the Crystal Ballroom (55 Davis Sq., Somerville).
• 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.

Want to suggest an event? Email us.

 

---