Things to Do This Week in Boston

COMEDY

Boston Comedy Festival
2025’s Boston Comedy Festival encompasses more than 20 events, including headlining sets from Emo Philips, Amy Miller, Michael Kosta, Eddie Pepitone, and Brooks Wheelan. The main event, however, is the competition itself, with 72 standups from across the U.S. bringing their best material for a stab at the $7000 first prize and, of course, the glory.
$20-$50, through Saturday, April 5, various venues, Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville

Greg Fitzsimmons
Most visible in the 2000s thanks to his frequent appearances on The Howard Stern Show, Chelsea Lately, and VH1’s Best Week Ever, Greg Fitzsimmons hosted an eponymous Sirius XM chat show from 2006 through 2018 and continues to talk to some of the biggest names in comedy on his podcast Fitzdog Radio. Last summer, he self-released a new standup special, You Know Me.
$33, Friday and Saturday, April 4-5, Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

MULTIMEDIA

Boston Turkish Film and Music Festival
Beginning on April 4th with a set of four screenings at the Museum of Fine Arts, this fest continues with women’s soccer doc Game Changers (Spielerinnen) at the Coolidge Corner Theater (April 13th) and three live music concerts at Boston’s Goethe-Institut, featuring classical pianist Hande Dalkiliç (April 12th), jazz pianist Utar Artun (April 19th), and jazz singer-pianist Süeda Çatakoğlu (April 25th).
Free-$25, Friday, April 4 through April 25, various venues, Boston and Brookline

CONVENTIONS

MIT Bitcoin Expo
Crypto enjoyers can learn from the best at this three-day assortment of keynote talks, panels, and workshops with more than 30 prominent figures representing all corners of the community, covering topics like privacy, self-sovereignty, and decentralization. There’s also a hackathon, some of whose participants in previous years have gone on to launch startups based on the work they submitted.
$150-$300, Friday through Sunday, April 4-6, Stata Center, MIT, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

FOOD + DRINK

Boston Wine Expo
With dozens of participating wineries, four grand tasting sessions, and several panel discussions and smaller tasting classes, you’re sure to leave the Boston Wine Expo a bit more knowledgeable and a bit less sober. Fun fact: it was actually wine, and not beer, that Ben Franklin declared to be “a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy.”
$95, Saturday and Sunday, April 5-6, Hilton Boston Park Plaza, 50 Park Plaza, Boston

THEATER

The Great Reveal
A complicated American family is the focus of David Valdes’ dramedy, commissioned by the Lyric Stage. Lexi, seven months pregnant, is thrilled for her baby’s upcoming gender reveal party, but her husband secretly frets about his impending fatherhood. Her trans brother, meanwhile, is struggling to keep the peace between Lexi and his irritated partner.
$46-$81, Friday, April 4 through April 27, Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon St., Boston

It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure
Disability-led British theater company FlawBored presents this black box satire about a group of disabled people who decide to exploit political correctness for fun and profit. If that sounds edgy, it is—but the point is to challenge their audience to confront their own hypocrisy and make a deeper commitment than guilt-driven pieties can deliver.
$38.50, Wednesday, April 2 through April 13, Emerson Paramount Center, 559 Washington St., Boston

Carousel
Boston Lyric Opera takes on Broadway with a production of this Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, a tale of costly romance in late 19th century coastal Maine. First performed 80 years ago, it’s best known for the songs “If I Loved You” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”
$87.50-$220.50, Friday, April 4 through April 13, Emerson Colonial Theater, 106 Boylston St., Boston

Her Portmanteau
Central Square Theater and Front Porch Arts Collective have taken the baton for the fourth installment of Mfoniso Udofia’s Ufot Family Cycle. In Her Portmanteau, Nigerian immigrant Abasiama, first seen as a young woman in Sojourners, reunites with her two very different, now full-grown daughters, forcing a confrontation with the past and between clashing values.
$103, through April 20, Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

Don’t Eat the Mangos
David Mendizábal (Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Movement Theatre Company) direct this Huntington production of Ricardo Pérez González’s comic tragedy about a dying Puerto Rican couple, their three disputatious daughters, an approaching hurricane, and a realization that vengeance is due.
$29-$150, Wednesday, March 26 through April 27, Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, 527 Tremont St., Boston

Night Side Songs
This intimate piece of music theater features folk-inspired songs by Daniel and Patrick Lazour, familiar to American Repertory Theater audiences for 2019’s We Live in Cairo. In Night Side Songs, the brothers, inspired by the Susan Sontag quote “Illness is the night side of life,” explore the lives of folks in the medical system across history—professionals, patients, and researchers alike.
$65, Thursday, March 27 through April 6, Cambridge Masonic Temple, 1950 Mass. Ave., Cambridge
$65, April 9 through April 20, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Roxbury

The Triumph of Love
The Huntington’s Loretta Greco takes on Marivaux’s tale of a princess who, for reasons we won’t get into here, disguises herself as a man in order to pursue a younger man who’s caught her fancy, causing all sorts of amusing mayhem. Originally viewed as scandalous, the play had to wait until the 20^th century for its brilliance to find redemption.
$29-$165, through April 6, The Huntington Theater, 264 Huntington Ave. Boston

MOVIES

Wicked Queer
With 40 screenings spread across six different venues, Wicked Queer celebrates the intricate diversity of contemporary queer cinema in grand style. This year’s spotlight films include Spanish supernatural fable Rains Over Babel, comedy The Wedding Banquet, documentaries Heightened Scrutiny and I’m Your Venus, and drama Outerlands.
Free-$17, Friday, April 4 through April 13, various venues, Boston, Cambridge, and Brookline.

The Penguin Lessons
In The Full Monty director Peter Cattaneo’s first film since 2019, Steve Coogan plays a burnt-out English guy who moves to Argentina in the 70s to teach. The new digs and gig don’t really ease his troubles, however—that requires, of all things, a penguin that he rescues from an oil slick on the beach.
$16.25-$18.75, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Hell of a Summer
Directed by Finn Wolfhard and Billy Bryk, this comic tribute to classic ’80s slashers takes place (naturally) at a summer camp, where a 24-year-old counselor (Fred Hechinger) struggles to win the admiration of his younger co-workers while a serial killer stalks the grounds.
$10.99-$14.49, opens Thursday, April 3, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

The Ballad of Wallis Island
British lottery winner Charles (Tim Key) invites his favorite musical act, Mortimer-McGwyer (Carey Mulligan and Tom Basden) to reunite for a show with an audience of one on the sparsely populated island he calls home. Surprisingly, the pair, also ex-lovers, agree, but their tensions aren’t quite resolved, to say the least.
$15-$17, opens Friday, April 4, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Death of a Unicorn
Unicorns are real—at least in this comedy thriller starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega as Elliot and Ridley, a father and daughter who accidentally hit one of the mythical beasts while driving through a nature preserve. When more powerful forces attempt to exploit the creatures’ magical abilities, the unicorns fight back—and it ain’t pretty.
$16.75-$18.75, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Bob Trevino Likes It
In writer-director Tracie Laymon’s autofictional drama, a young woman (Barbie Ferreira) searching for her vanished father (French Stewart) accidentally strikes up a friendship with a guy by the same name (John Leguizamo)—and while he may not be the dad she was looking for, he might be the one she needs.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
In the disconcerting second feature from British writer-director Rungano Nyoni (I Am Not a Witch), a Zambian woman ventures into the dark rabbit hole of her middle-class family’s secrets after encountering her uncle’s corpse on a late-night drive.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

Disney’s Snow White
Rachel Zegler (Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) star in this sumptuous live action version of the OG Disney animated feature, which stays remarkably true to the original’s visuals—but those expecting the exact same story will be a bit surprised.
$16.75-$18.75, opens Thursday, March 20, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Eephus
Set in the Worcester County town of Douglas in the mid-90s, New Hampshire native and Emerson grad Carson Lund’s bittersweet directorial debut depicts a group of middle-aged recreational baseball enthusiasts who take to the diamond for one last game before the county demolishes their field to build a new school.
$15-$17, opens Friday, March 14, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Black Bag
After the innovative ghost thriller Prescence, Steven Soderbergh is already back with this spy drama, in which a highly regarded intelligence agent (Michael Fassbender) is forced to choose between his loyalty to his work and his loyalty to his wife (Cate Blanchett), a fellow agent now suspected of treason.
$16.75-$18.75, opens Thursday, March 13, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Mickey 17
Six years after Parasite became an international sensation, Bong Joon-ho is back with a sci-fi tale starring Robert Pattinson as a desperate, out of work citizen of a dark future who signs up to become an “expendable” in a space colony, Niflheim. Each time his work inevitably kills him, he’s replaced by a clone—a system that works fine until the 17th in this succession turns out not to be dead.
$16.75-$18.75, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

The Monkey
Combining the fiction of Stephen King with the entertainingly deranged imagination of writer-director Osgood Perkins (Longlegs) seems like a winning recipe for horror, and that’s what you’ve got with this wild tale of a cursed old toy with a penchant for causing deviously creative murders.
$12.99-$16.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Paddington in Peru
Everyone’s favorite CGI bear sets off to his homeland with his custodians, the Brown family, to search for his aunt Lucy, who’s vanished from her retirement home. It’s not going to be easy, though—all he has to guide him is a rather mysterious map.
$10.99-$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

No Other Land
Made by four different directors over five years, this documentary provides a close-up look at the horrific experience of a cluster of Palestinian villages in the West Bank as the Israel Defense Forces destroy their neighborhoods to clear space for a military training ground.
$15-$17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

ALSO

• Where to Eat in Greater Boston This Month
• The Best Restaurants in Boston’s North End
• The Ultimate Guide to Candlepin Bowling in and around Boston

Want to suggest an event? Email us.

MONDAY (3/31/25)

MUSIC

Rebecca Black
Rebecca Black might have quit music due to embarrassment after her debut single “Friday” briefly became the laughing stock of the Internet in 2011, but she’s still at it 14 years later. In February, she released a second album, Salvation, whose disquieted hyperpop sound is best summarized by the title of its third track, “Sugar Water Cyanide.”
$60.21, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

COMEDY

Brooks Wheelan
Former Saturday Night Live cast member Brooks Wheelan has the honor of kicking off this year’s Boston Comedy Festival. Last year, the Iowa native embarked on what he’s described as a “disastrous” trip to Alaska, culminating in a sold-out Anchorage show that became his 2024 special Alive in Alaska.
$25-$35, 7:30 p.m., City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston

TUESDAY (4/1/25)

BOOKS + READINGS

Matteo Lane
Comedian Matteo Lane is an expert on pasta dishes—at least, he’s willing to bet he’s more of an expert than you, as implied by the title of his unconventional new cookbook Your Pasta Sucks, which offers 30 recipes and a few funny stories for good measure, plus random information like Lane’s suggested method for ordering coffee in Rome.
$53.50 (book included), 7:30 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

MUSIC

Moonlight Benjamin
Born in Haiti and currently residing in France, this self-described “punky voodoo queen” combines Haitian roots music, American blues-rock, and her own window-rattling contralto voice to create a guitar-driven exorcism of sound. One of her most popular songs, “Papa Legba,” pays hard-driving tribute to a central figure in Vodou mythology.
$36.50, 8 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

WEDNESDAY (4/2/25)

MUSIC

Butcher Brown
This ace jazz/funk/hip hop band from Richmond, Virginia can make any situation feel a little bit cooler. Active since 2009, they released a brand new album, Letter From the Atlantic, last Friday. Their excellent KEXP set from last year includes two of its tracks.
$36, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

BOOKS + READINGS

Jennifer Haigh
Many of this celebrated novelist’s books (Mrs. Kimble, Baker Towers, Heat and Light) are set in Pennsylvania’s coal country, where she grew up, but her latest, Rabbit Moon, is the first to take place in China—specifically, Shanghai, where a divorced American couple have travelled to be with their daughter, injured in a car accident while working as an English teacher.
$20-$30, 6:30 p.m., WBUR CitySpace, 890 Comm. Ave., Boston

THURSDAY (4/3/25)

MUSIC

Gossip
Fronted by the indominable Beth Ditto, this dance punk trio came out of the unlikely location of Searcy, Arkansas in 1999, joining the ranks of other back-to-basics early 2000s rock acts and becoming more glam over time. Their sixth and latest album, Real Power, dropped in 2024—for a sample, check out its disco-licious title track.
$34.75, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

Bubble Tea and Cigarettes
This darkly pretty Los Angeles indie pop act’s name connotes a heady mixture of toxicity and sweetness, as does their music, gravitating, on their second album, We Should’ve Killed Each Other, towards any sound that’s low energy and high vibes—shoegaze, vaporwave, ambient folk, melancholic 80s pop, and more.
$18, 8 p.m., Warehouse XI, 11 Sanborn Ct., Somerville

BOOKS + READINGS

Sarah Kay
Readers who often find poetry too obscure will appreciate the work of Sarah Kay, whose keeps her work, rooted in the spoken word tradition, accessible without sacrificing literary merit. Her new book, A Little Daylight Left, addresses universal questions: “What if you aren’t as bad as you suspect you are?/ What if you’ll never be as good as you ache?”
$34.74 (book included), 6 p.m., Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

FRIDAY (4/4/25)

MUSIC

J Balvin
Widely acknowledged as the “Prince of Reggaeton,” J Balvin has twice landed in Spotify’s top five most streamed artists of the year (in 2018 and 2020) and currently stands at number 27 in monthly listeners. His sixth album, Rayo, released last summer, makes a few departures from the typical reggaeton beat, including the house track “Gaga”.
$95.15-$350.15, 8 p.m., Agganis Arena, 925 Comm. Ave., Boston

Bella White
In her bio, this Nashville-based singer-songwriter prides herself on avoiding “modern and fussy arrangements.” Her choices of artists to cover on her recent EP Five for Silver—Neil Young, Lucinda Williams, Jeff Tweedy, Ted Lucas, and Gram Parsons—would make any dad proud, but it’s her skill for making the songs her own that stands out most.
$29, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

Nubya Garcia
This brilliant British jazz saxophonist has been playing since age 10. Her third album, Odyssey, released in September, opens with “Dawn”, a transcendent collaboration with fellow millennial prodigy Esperanza Spalding. While other tracks match its baroque qualities, elsewhere Garcia favors red hot small ensemble workouts like “Solstice”.
$40.25, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

COMEDY

Troy Hawke: The Greeters Guild
The alter ego of English comedian Milo McCabe, Troy Hawke sports a pencil mustache, a smoking jacket, and an absurdly posh accent. One might expect such a character to be a snob, but Hawke is a master of the eloquent compliment, as demonstrated in a heap of delightful social media videos that show him gassing up strangers on the street.
$35, 6 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

Janet McNamara
Like many great comics before her, Janet McNamara’s relatively flat affect belies a mischievous mind, as in this joke about texting her dad, or her strange tale of battling her own thoughts as a kid. As for hecklers, some comics like to toy with them, but McNamara will just ask them to fight her.
$25.85, 7:30 p.m., White Bull Tavern, 1 Union St., Boston

SATURDAY (4/5/25)

MUSIC

Snow Patrol
Best known for their introspective 2006 power ballad “Chasing Cars”, Snow Patrol helped chart a path forward for mainstream British rock after the Britpop era. The Forest Is the Path is their newest album. On tracks like “This Is the Silence”, they continue to carry the torch for a certain kind of 2000s light rock grandeur, shared by contemporaries like Coldplay.
$50.25-$73.75, 8 p.m., MGM Music Hall, 2 Lansdowne St., Boston

Big Wreck
Formed by a group of Berklee students in 1992, post-grunge act Big Wreck gained a strong following both in the U.S. and Canada. After seven years lying fallow between 2003 and 2010, they came back even stronger with the 2012 album Albatross, and they have not ceased rocking since.
$32.75, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

Black Sherif
Ghanaian singer/rapper blew up thanks to his song “Kwaku the Traveller”, a distinctly West African reflection of American drill music. Other big tracks include “Second Sermon (Remix)”, which showcases his dexterous flow, and the optimistic “Oil in My Head”, in which he compares his creativity to a valuable reserve of petroleum.
$34.16, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

SUNDAY (4/6/25)

MUSIC

The War and Treaty
One of several Black country acts to gain traction in the last few years, this married duo hails from Washington, DC. Their 2023 collaboration with Zack Bryan, “Hey Driver”, broke into the Hot 100, one of a few milestones that helped them earn a 2024 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. In February they released a new record, Plus One.
$40.25, 7:30 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

Racoma
They may be from the busy, hip city of Seattle, but indie folk rockers Racoma sound like they’ve been out in the country on their 2024 effort In Vine. There’s something about singer Glenn Haider’s slightly quavering, twangy singing and the band’s loose but steady pulse that summons up images of ambling in the woods or lazing by a pond.
$19.50, 8 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

COMEDY

Emily Catalano
If the MTV cartoon character Daria grew up to be a standup comedian, she might be like the sardonic Emily Catalano, a lover and skilled practitioner of the fake out joke. “I just took two gummies,” she says at the top of her self-released special Unspecial. “They were women’s multivitamin gummies.”
$33, 4:30 p.m., and 7 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

David Nihil
Rescheduled from March 9: This comic left his native Dublin at 22 and has taken up residence in 12 countries since then, his experiences of which form a large chunk of his act. He released his latest special, Cultural Appreciation, to his own YouTube account last year.
$36.50-$68.50, 7 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

MONDAY (4/7/25)

MUSIC

Emery
While they haven’t updated their sound much since their heyday in the 2000s and 2010s, emo band Emery have made some interesting moves in recent years, including recording The Night’s End, an album of “lullaby” versions of their own typically aggressive songs, and creating their own cryptocurrency, Emerycoin.
$30-$45, 7:30 p.m., City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston

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

ATTRACTIONS

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

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

Courtesy

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

Courtesy Museum of Illusions

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

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

The Innovation Trail
This 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

ART + EXHIBITIONS (Ongoing)

Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits
Featuring around 20 works by Van Gogh, this exhibition, the first of its kind, focuses on the famous post-impressionist’s close and creatively generative relationship with his neighbors in Arles, France, the Roulins, who had the sort of ordinary family life he dreamed of but never achieved.
$34, Sunday, March 30 through September 7, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

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

Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking
While The Scream made Edvard Munch a household name in art history, its fame has come somewhat at the expense of the rest of his large and remarkable oeuvre. Featuring around 70 works, many from Harvard Art Museums’ own collection, this exhibition highlights the emotive Norwegian expressionist’s innovations in materials and techniques.
Free, Friday, March 7 through July 27, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

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

Waters of the Abyss: An Intersection of Spirit and Freedom
Haitian artist Fabiola Jean-Louis’ vibrant, multimedia, Vodou reflection of the Gardner Museum’s collection of predominantly European Catholic uses all three temporary exhibition areas to create an autobiographical, historical, spiritual, and political journey, asking two key questions: “What lies at the heart of Black freedom? How are liberation and spirituality intertwined?”
$22, through May 25, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston

Janiva Ellis: Fear Corroded Ape
For Fear Corroded Ape, Janiva Ellis dusted off a group of old, unfinished paintings, each of which she’s struggled repeatedly, over many years, to bring to completion. In their lack of integration, they become a powerful way for Ellis to depict a materially and ideologically crumbling world and the violence, both hidden and overt, that has always undergirded it.
Free, through April 6, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, 24 Quincy St., Cambridge

Joana Choumali: Languages of West African Marketplaces
There’s a strange disjuncture in this set of 12 hand-quilted and embroidered portraits by Ivorian artist Joana Choumali, whose earnest young West African subjects wear t-shirts printed with silly American slogans and jokes that they don’t know how to translate. From this side of the Atlantic, it’s a surreal and revealing look in the mirror.
Free, through May 11, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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