Things to Do This Week in Boston

Frog Pond Skating Rink
The Frog Pond’s rink, a classic choice for winter dates and family outings in the heart of historic downtown Boston, might be the city’s most iconic skate spot. It’s open seven days a week throughout the season and until 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
Free-$10 (skate rentals extra), through March 10, Boston Common, 38 Beacon St., Boston
See also: Where to Find Outdoor Skating Rinks in Boston This Winter

Snowport
Snowport’s Holiday Market is over, but you can still have fun on the iceless curling lanes (lessons can be booked here) through the end of February. Special events are over as well, but there will be a few more appearances from adorable cryptid Betty the Yeti.
Free, through February 28, Seaport Blvd., Boston

THEATER

Life & Times of Michael K
South Africa’s Baxter Theater brings J.M. Coetzee’s novel to life with help from the moving creations of Handspring Puppet Company. Our protagonist, Michael K, encounters angels and demons from within and without as he travels through war-torn South Africa to bring his mother back to her home to die.
$25-$92.50, Friday, January 31 through February 9, Emerson Paramount Center, 559 Washington St., Boston

S P A C E
MIT’s Catalyst Collaborative presents L M Feldman’s examination of the rarely told history of women in aviation and space exploration. Its genesis came from Feldman learning about the thirteen female pilots who served as medical test subjects in the early days of the American space program.
$26-$97, Thursday, January 30 through February 23, Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

Peter Pan
The 1954 Broadway hit is back with a slightly revised list of songs and a new book by playwright Larissa FastHorse, who shifts the setting from Britain to the United States and switches out the original story’s indigenous tribe for a community of people from across the world.
$35-$200, through Sunday, February 2, Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston

The Piano Lesson
Actors’ Shakespeare Project presents August Wilson’s Pulitzer and Tony winning drama about a Pittsburgh family with a unique heirloom: a piano carved by an enslaved ancestor. When one of them, Boy Willie, broaches the idea of selling it to buy land, his sister Berniece protests. Before long, though, a new revelation emerges to complicate the debate.
$20-$64, through February 23, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Roxbury

Ain’t No Mo’
Front Porch Arts Collective and SpeakEasy Stage Company bring Jordan E. Cooper’s Tony-nominated satire to Boston. Ain’t No Mo’ imagines, in a set of vignettes, an alternate universe in which a government program offers every Black person in the United States a free airline ticket to re-settle in Africa.
$25-$85, through February 8, Roberts Studio Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston

Crumbs from the Table of Joy
Tasia A. Jones directs Lynn Nottage’s 1995 drama about a pair of Black teen sisters living under the austere roof of their deeply religious widower father, who’s recently relocated the family from Brooklyn to Florida. To make things even more disorienting, he announces that he’s about to marry a white German woman.
$46-$81, through February 2, Lyric Stage, 140 Clarendon St., Boston

DANCE

Omayra Amaya Flamenco Dance Company: Antes del fin
This Miami-based troupe explores human evolution and the human condition in a collection of original works whose title translates to Before the End. Born into a family of Romani Flamenco dancers, Amaya has been appearing on stage since the age of three. Since then, she’s performed around the world, including a nine-month residency at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston.
$35-$80, Friday through Sunday, January 31-February 2, Arrow Street Arts, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge

MUSIC

Something in the Way Fest
Balance & Composure, Soccer Mommy, and American Football headline the Saturday leg of this this two-day indie rock binge, with Slowdive, Fiddlehead, and Mannequin Pussy bringing up the rear on Sunday. If you’re hungry for more, don’t miss Sunday’s late show, featuring Boston shoegaze greats Drop Nineteens.
$30-$215, Saturday and Sunday, February 1-2, Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Brighton

COMEDY

James “Murr” Murray
The man known simply as Murr is best known for being one of the four stars of truTV’s Impractical Jokers. In addition to standup, he’ll be sharing stories and exclusive videos from the set—and if you’re lucky, you might just get roped into a live version of the show.
$40-$50, Friday and Saturday, January 31-February 1, Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

FANDOM

Harry Potter: The Exhibition
Kids and adults awaiting the next nugget Harry Potter media can visit the Wizarding World in spirit at this interactive show, a wonderland of props, costumes, and recreated sets and scenes from the main films, the Fantastic Beasts series, and the stage show Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
$25-$51, through April 27, CambridgeSide, 100 CambridgeSide Pl., Cambridge

MOVIES

Timestalker
The second film from writer, director, and actress Alice Lowe (Prevenge), Timestalker is a surreal deconstruction of romantic comedies that asks the question, “What if a terrible relationship was doomed to repeat itself across countless lifetimes?” Only through reaching enlightenment itself can our heroine, Agnes (Lowe) move on, but that’s easier said than done.
$15, Friday through Tuesday, January 31-February 4, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Companion
The newest nightmare from writer-director Zach Cregger (Barbarian) depicts the breakdown of a group of friends visiting a beautiful lakeside home. Further details of the plot have been kept under wraps, but knowing Cregger, you can expect things to get extremely out of control in short order.
$12.99-$16.49, opens Wednesday, January 29, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

I’m Still Here
Not to be confused with the 2010 Joaquin Phoenix mockumentary of the same name, this 2024 drama focuses on a family, the Paivas, living in Brazil in the early 70s, a time when the country’s military dictatorship was intensifying. In their beach house, the Paivas have mostly been able to avoid the worst. Then, one day, the worst comes knocking at their door.
$15-$17, opens Friday, January 17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

The Illusory Tableaux of Georges Méliès
Cinema had scarcely been invented before people started pushing it to its limits, and one those people was special effects pioneer Georges Méliès. Covering his filmed magic tricks, his work with involving dreams, myth, and fantasy, and his depictions of fantastic voyages (including the famous A Trip to the Moon), this series serves as a wonderful introduction to his whimsical world.
$10, Saturday, February 1 through February 9, Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

All We Imagine as Light
Writer-director Payal Kapadia’s poetic drama of modern urban life, the winner of 2024’s Grand Prix at Cannes, examines the lives of three healthcare workers in Mumbai—nurses Prabha and Anu and hospital cook Parvaty—as they navigate everything from to romance to eviction.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Some of the Best of 2024
Didn’t make it out to the movies enough last year? The Brattle has you covered this month with a few of their favorite releases. Highlights include the father-daughter drama Good One, recent Golden Globe winner Emilia Pérez, grim documentary Sugarcane, the folk horror fable Omen, the animated spectacle Flow, and the tennis court love triangle drama Challengers.
$13-$15, through January 30, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Boston Festival of Films from Iran
Another superb collection of recent and classic Iranian cinema awaits at this annual fest, which opens with The Seed of the Sacred Fig, a thriller about a family riven by political anxiety. Exiled director Mohammad Rasoulof, wanted by the Iranian government for his political speech and activities, audaciously filmed the movie in secret.
$15, through February 7, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

The Brutalist
Brady Corbet’s epic period piece, examining the life of fictional architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody), screens at the Somerville Theater in gloriously crisp 70mm. Formerly well-established, László arrives as Holocaust survivor in the United States with nothing, rebuilding his life over many years—but not without further adversity.
$17-$19, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

The Room Next Door
Provocative Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s first English language film stars Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore as Martha and Ingrid, old friends who reunite under rather unusual circumstances after many years out of touch, during which their careers took very different flight paths.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
Gerard Butler and O’Shea Jackson Jr. return as Los Angeles detective Big Nick O’Brien and master thief Donnie Wilson, but this time the former adversaries team up for a major diamond heist, attracting the unenviable attention of the Panther mafia.
$10.99-$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Nickel Boys
RaMell Ross’ debut feature brings Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning novel to the big screen in vintage 35mm. The story focuses on Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), a pair of teens enduring abusive treatment at a Florida reform school in the 1960s.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Projections
The Coolidge Corner Theater starts off 2025 with a month-long series of stone cold sci-fi/fantasy classics, including Return of the Jedi, Fantastic Planet, Starship Troopers, Star Trek: First Contact, They Live, The Fifth Element, Snowpiecer, Stargate, and both installments of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune.
$17-$30, through January 30, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Babygirl
Nicole Kidman, Antonio Banderas, and Harris Dickinson star in this old-school erotic thriller from director Halina Reijn (Bodies Bodies Bodies). In a flip of the genre’s ’90s gender dynamics, Kidman plays a CEO seduced into a kinky relationship Dickinson’s fresh young intern—but how long will she risk everything?
$10.99-$15.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston 

A Complete Unknown
Timothée Chalamet steps into Bob Dylan’s intimidating shoes for the first conventional biopic on the legendary singer-songwriter. Rather than rushing through his whole storied career, the film focuses on his early days and romances, including with Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). Chalamet provides his own vocals for the songs.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Nosferatu
Robert Eggers (The Lighthouse, The Northman) has turned in a second remake of the 1922 Dracula clone, one of the most influential horror films ever made. Eggers’ version emphasizes the psychic relationship between Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) and Ellen Hunter (Lily-Rose Depp), casting the story as a twisted anti-romance.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

Mufasa: The Lion King
Disney returns to its computer animated Lion King universe to relate the never-before-told story of Simba’s father, Mufasa, and the origins of his epic beef with Scar. As it turns out, the great king had humble beginnings as an abandoned cub, and it was Scar, a prince, who found him.
$9.99-$15.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Flow
This gorgeous Latvian animated feature has earned awards at multiple festivals. Entirely lacking dialogue, it follows a cat who, after its home is destroyed in a sudden flood, finds a boat and joins its animal crew in exploring a newly submerged world.
$9-$13, Capitol Theater, 204 Massachusetts Ave., Arlington

The Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim
Kenji Kamiyama (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex) directed this anime Lord of the Rings tale, based on notes from the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkein’s fantasy epic. Taking place 183 years before the main trilogy, The War of Rohirrim centers on Helm Hammerhand, king of Rohan, tasked with defending his country from the invading Dunlendings.
$10.99-$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Moana 2
Disney returns to ancient Polynesia for this sequel, which finds our heroine (Auliʻi Cravalho) teaming up once again with the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) to break a powerful curse. Along the way, the encounter the familiar Kakamora, as well as a new enemy, Matangi, a goddess of the underworld.
$7-$15.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Maria Callas
Angelina Jolie takes on legendary opera singer Maria Callas in this biopic, focusing, with plenty of flashbacks, on the last days of a life that took Callas from a tense upbringing in a Greek immigrant family to the heights of international fame.
$13.50-$15.50, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Wicked
The long-awaited Hollywood version of the beloved Broadway smash—easily the most successful piece of Wizard of Oz fan fiction ever produced—is finally here and bigger than ever, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, future Wicked Witch of the West, opposite Ariana Grande as Glinda.
$13.99-$17.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Gladiator II
Perhaps it was all those men thinking about the Roman Empire that manifested this belated sequel to Ridley Scott’s 2000 historical epic. Paul Mescal leads the cast as Lucius, son of Maximus, led by unfortunate events to carry on his father’s blood sport legacy.
$16.50-$18.50, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Anora
The winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes, this rags-to-riches romance from Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Tangerine) weds a New York sex worker (Mikey Madison) to the scion of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn). They’re happy—until his scandalized parents are determined to undo the marriage.
$8-$13, 204 Mass Ave., Capitol Theatre, Arlington

ALSO:

• The Ultimate Guide to Candlepin Bowling in and around Boston

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MONDAY (1/27/25)

MUSIC

Ben Barnes
Best known for his acting (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, HBO’s Westworld, Marvel series The Punisher), Ben Barnes began releasing music in 2021 with the EP Songs for You. Its full-length follow-up, Where the Light Gets In, appeared this month, and it’s a big, soulful pop production, befitting a dramatist.
$35, 8 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

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TUESDAY (1/28/25)

BOOKS + READINGS

Imani Perry
This Harvard humanities professor and author (South to America) talks WBUR’s Cristela Guerra about her new book Black in Blues, a reflection on the meaning of the color blue in Black American life, culture, and history. No stone is unturned, from obvious connections like blues music to the indigo cloths that were once traded for enslaved people in West Africa.
$10-$38, 6 p.m., Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

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WEDNESDAY (1/29/25)

MUSIC

070 Shake
Born Danielle Balbuena, this singer-rapper came to prominence via her appearance on the 2022 Raye track “Escapism”; prior to that, she appeared on two deep cuts from Kanye West’s 2018 album Ye. To date she’s released three studio albums; the latest, Petrichor, dropped in November.
$55-$230, 8 p.m., House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston

Baynk
This androgynous New Zealand-born electronic pop artist is slowly released his 2024 album Senescence track by track. While capable of straightforward dance pop songs like “Grin” and “Older”, he also goes for more avant-garde sounds like the romantically disorienting beat on “Fool for You”.
$25-$35, 8 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

MOVIES

Born Innocent: The Redd Kross Story
Centering on the brotherly duo of Jeff and Steve McDonald, Los Angeles band Redd Kross came up in the early hardcore punk scene, but by the time of their 1990 major label debut Third Eye, they’d become a power pop band—and a criminally underrated one at that. This long-overdue rock doc tells their whole entertaining story.
$15, 7:30 p.m., Regent Theater, 7 Medford St., Arlington

BOOKS + READINGS

Nina MacLaughlin, Joan Wickersham, and Lucy Ives
A trio of masterful creative nonfiction writers share the evening at Cambridge Public Library. Nina MacLaughlin reads from her Massachusetts Book Award-winning essay Winter Solstice; National Book Award finalist Joan Wickersham reads from her memoir No Ship Sets Out to Be a Shipwreck; Lucy Ives shares passages from her essay collection An Image of My Name Enters America.
Free, 6 p.m. Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge

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THURSDAY (1/30/25)

MUSIC

Christian Lee Hutson
Originally a member of The Driftwood Singers, Americana-tinged singer-songwriter Christian Lee Hutson went solo in 2013. His pal Phoebe Bridgers produced his last three albums, including 2024’s Paradise Pop. 10; he’s also co-written songs with Bridgers and her collaborative projects Boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center.
$29, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

COMEDY

Tina Friml
This Vermont native’s comedy focuses on her life with cerebral palsy, something about which she clears the air immediately, gently teasing her audience’s anticipated discomfort. “[People] think I suffer from cerebral palsy, which I don’t” she explained in her 2023 Tonight Show debut. “I have cerebral palsy—I suffer from people.”
$33, 7 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

Awkward Sex… and the City
We all hope for romance on a date, but sometimes it just isn’t in the cards. From a poorly timed IBS flare-up to an ill-advised cocaine binge, New York City comic Natalie Wall shares some of her worst dating experiences in this show, transforming them through the power of comedy into amusement for you.
$15-$20, 7 p.m., The Rockwell, 255 Elm St., Somerville

MUSEUMS

Lunar New Year at the Museum of Fine Arts
The Year of the Snake arrives at the MFA with a spotlight on Chinese Empresses, a paper cutting workshop, live music, lion dancing, martial arts demos, special gallery tours, talks on subjects ranging from Buddhist art to Korean pottery to Chinese tea traditions, and, randomly enough, a free vision screening.
Pay-what-you-wish ($5 minimum), 5 p.m.-10 p.m., Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Emily Austin
Novelist Emily Austin will discuss her latest, We Could Be Rats, with Harvard lecturer Kimm Topping. The plot revolves around two very different, estranged sisters—one a dropout, one a rule-follower—and their confrontation with the demons of their shared upbringing.
Free or $29.74 with book included, 6 p.m., Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge

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FRIDAY (1/31/25)

MUSIC

Jamie xx
While his band the xx stays within the boundaries of indie pop, Jamie xx follows his electronic muse wherever it takes him in his solo work. Each song on his 2024 album In Waves explores a different set of textures and vibes, relishing in the pure pleasure in creating sound.
$100, 7 p.m., Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Brighton

(((O)))
June Marieezy chose an unpronounceable symbol as her stage name, which presumably causes problems for radio DJs but fits her otherworldly aesthetic perfectly. While earlier tracks, like “Travelin,’” could be described as blissfully spaced-out R&B, her most recent release, ((( 5 ))), abandons beats altogether, drifting into the realm of ambient music.
$32.75, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

Yulia Musayelyan Quartet
The flute has a light, pixie-like reputation among wind instruments, but in Yulia Musayelyan’s hands, it’s as powerful and sharp as any trumpet or sax. The Russian-born jazz composer celebrates the release of her new album Strange Times at this show, back by pianist Maxim Lubarsky, bassist Fernando Huergo, and drummer Mark Walker.
$30, 7:30 p.m., Regattabar, 1 Bennett St., Cambridge

COMEDY

Salma Zaky
Offbeat New York City comic Salma Zaky jokes in her bio that her parents’ support of her comedy career “makes it really hard to live as a brooding comedian.” In a 2023 Don’t Tell Comedy clip, she recalls a time when she thought she might be asexual: “So, in order to explore this,” she explains, “I went to an asexual orgy… It was just game night.”
$22.50, 7:30 p.m., White Bull Tavern, 1 Union St., Boston

TALKS

Jad Abumrad: How to Talk to a Human
Professional smart dude Jad Abumrad, creator and former co-host of Radiolab, stops by the Harvard campus to deliver a presentation on interviews and other challenging types of conversations, tackling the subject with his familiar mix of scientific factoids and human interest. Hopefully, you’ll leave a bit better equipped for interpersonal success than when you arrived.
$94, 8 p.m., Sanders Theater, 45 Quincy St., Cambridge

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SATURDAY (2/1/25)

MUSIC

Cloonee
This British house producer is a bit of a chameleon, changing tones to match his collaborators, from the Latin vibes of “Pegao,” made with Mexican producer Andruss, to the slightly demented hip-hop energy of “Stephanie”, made with American rapper Young M.A. and InntRaw.
$35-$50, 9:30 p.m., Big Night Live, 110 Causeway St., Boston

Meklit
An Ethiopian reimagining American pop, funk, soul, and jazz through her own unique lens, Meklit Hadero has a diverse catalogue of songs, from the jazzy, sax-driven “Supernova” to the sexy blues shuffle of “Kemekem (I Like Your Afro)” to the joyful propulsion of “I Want to Sing for Them All”, which features a violin performance from Andrew Bird.
$34-$84, 8 p.m., Berklee Performance Center, 136 Mass. Ave., Boston

Kerosene Heights
These North Carolina emo revivalists (actually, in their bio, they somewhat wryly describe themselves as participants in the “emo revival revival”) recall 90s acts like Jawbreaker and the Promise Ring. Their latest release, the EP Leaving, offers four tracks of fuzzed-out, cathartic caterwauling whose crackling energy proves that the house Fugazi built was built to last.
$15, 8 p.m., Warehouse XI, 11 Sanborn Ct., Somerville

GOING OUT

La Salsa me enamora
DJ Cano Cangrejo and MetaMovements are your hosts for this salsa party, which ought to make you forget about the recent cold weather—at least for a couple hours. If you don’t know how to dance to salsa, don’t worry—they’ll teach you. How’s that for hospitality?
Free, 8 p.m., CROMA Space, Arlington Street Church, Public Alley 438, Boston

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SUNDAY (2/2/25)

MUSIC

Sicard Hollow
This Nashville outfit plays bluegrass like a punk band, calling attention to punk’s folk roots and bringing a youthful vitality to bluegrass. As proof of concept, they even do a cover of Green Day’s “Longview”, pushing the original’s quiet-loud dynamics to even greater extremes.
$15, 8 p.m., Warehouse XI, 11 Sanborn Ct., Somerville

FANDOM

Jay and Silent Bob: The Aural Sects Tour
No matter what else happens in any given Kevin Smith movie, fans know that Jay and Silent Bob, played respectively by Jason Mewes and Smith himself, are the true stars. At this show, the pair will appear out-of-character, sharing stories from their 30 years of collaboration and, in their words, “struggling to maintain their dwindling pop cultural relevance.”
$35-$107, 7 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

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MONDAY (2/3/25)

MUSIC

Rachael Davis and R.O. Shapiro
Rachael Davis, once a member of the Boston folk scene, has a reputation for jubilant vibes and entertaining on-stage digressions; eastern Long Island native R.O. Shapiro comes to us from San Diego, where he’s currently refining his talent for humane acoustic storytelling.
$25, 8 p.m., Club Passim, 47 Palmer St., Cambridge

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Ongoing

SHOPPING

Somerville Winter Farmers Market
With many outdoor farmers markets moving into hibernation, this weekly indoor market, with close to 70 vendors offering produce, dairy, meat, pastries, coffee, specialty items, and more, is an excellent cold weather alternative.
Free, Saturdays through April 12, Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

Copley Square Farmers Market
Farmers markets spring up across the Boston area this time of year, but Copley Square hosts the largest, offering a cornucopia of local produce, meats, dairy, baked goods, and prepared meals, as well as some non-edible products.
Free, Tuesdays and Fridays through November 26, Copley Square, 227-230 Dartmouth St., Boston

ATTRACTIONS

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

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

Museum of Illusions
Experience the delights of confusing your brain at this new downtown attraction, featuring a set of images, installations, and “illusion rooms” designed to make reality feel a little less normal—and to provide some fun and crazy photo ops for the Gram.
$38, opens Saturday, November 23, 200 State St., Boston

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

The Innovation Trail
This 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

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

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ART + EXHIBITIONS (Ongoing)

Frank M. Costantino: Visionary Projects
The Boston Athenaeum provides a look behind the scenes of the architectural process through this spotlight on local illustrator Frank M. Costantino, whose 50-year career has included many close-to-home projects, including Hynes Convention Center, the Esplanade, and the Old State House.
$10, Monday, February 3 through May 3, Boston Athenaeum, 10 ½ Beacon St., Boston

List Projects 31: Kite
The work of the artist Kite, running the gamut from experimental music to video to sculpture to performance, is not easy to summarize, but several themes return, including emergent technology, the philosophical tradition of her people, the Lakȟóta, and the act of close listening—not only to other people, but to dreams and other intelligent entities as well.
Free, Thursday, January 30 through May 18, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St., Bldg. E15-109, Cambridge

Future Fossils
As climate change and other very reasonable fears prompt anxiety about the future of global civilization, it’s worth asking: what will the people of the future think of us? In this show, eighteen artists from around the world, including Ai Weiwei, Sanford Biggers, Do Ho Suh, and Nari Ward, take up that question, producing an uncanny portrait of contemporary life.
Free, through April 13, MassArt Art Museum, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston

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

Waste Scenes
Maia Chao and Fred Schmidt-Arenales’ project for Recycled Artist in Residency centers on a two-channel video installation contrasting various performances with material gathered from construction and demolition waste piles. The artists conceive of humans as the “counterpart” to trash, exploring our disavowed relationship to waste in both its tragic and comic dimensions.
Free, through March 29, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St., Boston 

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

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

Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools: 300 Years of Flemish Masterworks
When it comes to painting, nobody in Europe did it quite like the Flemish, inhabitants of modern-day Belgium who revolutionized the art between the 15th and 17th centuries, in terms both of technique and subject matter. Artists on display include Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Hans Memling, Jan Gossaert, Jan Brueghel, and many more. You’ll also get to see a recreated “cabinet of curiosities.”
$20, through May 4, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

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

Power of the People: Art and Democracy
The Museum of Fine Arts has scoured its extensive collection to assemble this eclectic exploration of the ways in which artists have celebrated democracy, exhorted viewers to participate, and raised the alarm about its health. Objects range from the silver work of Paul Revere to Roman coinage to the stylish posters of Shepard Fairey.
$27, through February 16, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Titanic: the Artifact Exhibition
Although Robert Ballad, the leader of the team that discovered the wreck of the Titanic, hoped no one would ever go back look for cool stuff there, people totally did. This show, offering a fascinating and intimate glimpse into the famous ocean liner’s lost world, is the first chance Bostonians have had in several years to view these objects.
$39.50-$65, through May 26, The Castle at Park Plaza, 130 Columbus Ave., Boston

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

Mary Ellen Mark: A Seattle Family, 1983-2014
The Gardner devotes its Fenway Gallery to renowned photojournalist Mary Ellen Mark’s personal and artistic relationship with Erin “Tiny” Blackwell, a Seattle resident who met Mark as a teenage runaway and consented to having her life documented—a project that went on for a remarkable 30 years.
$22, through January 27, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston

Charles Atlas: About Time
Immerse yourself in the 50-year career of Missouri-born interdisciplinary artist Charles Atlas, who made his name filming the dances of Merce Cunningham. Eventually, he struck out on his own, but capturing dance and other performances—often in ways that challenged sexual and gender norms—remained central to his practice.
$20, through March 16, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Narwhal: Revealing an Arctic Legend
Instantly recognizable among cetaceans for its remarkably long horn, the narwhal is unlike any other sea creature, seemingly ripped from the pages of a fanciful medieval world map. Not satisfied to stop at the narwhal’s mere oddness, this Smithsonian exhibition dives deep into its changing artic world, with input from scientists and members of the Inuit communities who’ve known it the longest.
$20, through June 15, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Conjuring the Spirit World: Art, Magic, and Mediums
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a mania for contacting the dead spread across Europe and the United States—it was the era of Spiritualism. This show brings together a wide array of objects and art—paintings, posters, photos, stage contraptions, and more—to try to get to the bottom of this macabre and often sensationalist pop cultural epoch. See paintings, posters, photographs, stage apparatuses, costumes, film, publications, and other objects that transport visitors to the age of Harry Houdini, Margery the Medium, Howard Thurston, and the Fox Sisters, among others.
$20, through Sunday, February 2, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Tau Lewis: Spirit Level
Toronto-born, Jamaican-descended artist Tau Lewis crafts densely textured objects from a variety of found materials with some personal meaning—fabrics, photos, stuff from the beach, etc. In doing so, she reclaims the power to produce in a factory-made world and participates in a diasporic tradition of upcycling ingenuity.
$20, through Jan 20, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Agustina Woodgate: Ballroom
Visitors to this installation pass over a set of globes on the floor, all carefully altered to erase national borders and other human-declared lines of divison. What’s the message—one of earthly unity, or humanity’s self-destruction? The answer is left for us to ponder.
$20, through February 23, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

The Salem Witch Trials 1692
Even when the story of the Salem Witch Trials is told with accuracy, the distance of centuries can make it hard to imagine. With this ongoing exhibition, the Peabody Essex Museum tries to close that gap a bit, bringing the timeline and context of the infamous miscarriage of justice to life through original documents and artifacts.
$20, ongoing, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

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OUT OF TOWN

Tony Sarg: Genius at Play
Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Nantucket Historical Association, this exhibition opened this summer at the Nantucket Whaling Museum as the first comprehensive show exploring the life, art, and adventures of Tony Sarg (1880–1942). Known as the father of modern puppetry in North America and the originator of the iconic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade balloons, Sarg was an accomplished illustrator, animator, designer, and nimble entrepreneur who summered on—and took inspiration from—Nantucket for nearly twenty years. “Genius at Play” features original artwork, illustrations, marionettes, animations, books, commercial products, archival photographs, and ephemera from Sarg’s dynamic life and career. Highlighting Sarg’s tremendous talent and legacy within the fields of puppetry and illustration, the exhibition also reveals how Nantucket inspired the many ways that this influential artist gave back to the island he loved so much. —JACI CONRY
Through January 31, 13 Broad St., Nantucket, 508-228-1894, nha.org.

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