Things to Do This Week in Boston

Boston Marathon Fan Fest and Expo
Help manifest good Marathon energy at Fan Fest, with live music some great local cover bands (all three days), a yoga class (Saturday morning), and appearances from pro athletes (Saturday and Sunday). The Expo, meanwhile, features three afternoons of panels on running, including appearances from Ali Feller, Bill Rodgers, Dave McGillivray, and Carrie Tollefson.
Fan Fest: Free, Friday through Sunday, April 18-20, City Hall Plaza, 1 City Hall Sq., Boston
Expo: Free, Friday through Sunday, April 18-20 Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston St., Boston

COMEDY

Michael Longfellow
Promoted to repertory status for his third season on Saturday Night Live, Michael Longfellow has already outlasted many an alum. He’s best known for his willingness to play pretty much anyone or anything on “Weekend Update”, but in January he appeared as himself, arguing against the TikTok ban—“It’s the first political opinion I’ve ever had,” he announced.
$33, Friday and Saturday, April 18-19, Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

Sarah Tollemache
This observational New York City comic makes stops on both sides of the Charles this weekend. She filmed her self-released 2024 special B*tth*le Money while nine months pregnant, something she doesn’t directly reference until 34 minutes in. “I’m gonna keep it,” she reassures her audience.
Friday, April 18: $25.85, 7:30 p.m., White Bull Tavern, 1 Union St., Boston
Sunday, April 20: $15-$20, 7 p.m., The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge

MULTIMEDIA

Boston Turkish Film and Music Festival
This fest continues with live music concerts at Boston’s Goethe-Institut, featuring jazz pianist Utar Artun (April 19th) and jazz singer-pianist Süeda Çatakoğlu (April 25th).
Free-$25, through April 25, various venues, Boston and Brookline

MUSIC

LSZEE
LSZEE is what you get when CloZee and LSDREAM decide to form an EDM superduo. If you want a preview, CloZee has posted a whole Red Rocks set from October, and it’s a heady journey, weaving through pop moments, dreamy diversions, brain-liquifying dubstep, and hip hop swagger.
$77.76-$83.62, Friday and Saturday, April 18-19, Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Brighton

The Boston Progressive Jazz Festival
Promising “music at the sonic frontier,” this fest includes sets from the NJO, KIW, Caio e Jess, Flora, and Shwesmo on Saturday, with Fall Raye, Voodoo Baby Aliens, Reynaliz Herrera, boyarin/hofbauer/djikstra/mark, Luiza Girardello, and David Fiuczynski’s KiF on Sunday—all in all, probably the most creatively diverse lineup you’ll find anywhere in town this weekend.
$25-$40, Saturday and Sunday, April 19-20, Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

Boston Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 ft. Mitsuko Uchida
The great Beethoven interpreter Mitsuko Uchida joins Andris Nelsons’ BSO for the master’s fourth concerto, which saw him drifting from the Mozart formula for the first time—and, in its premiere, performing with an orchestra as a soloist for the last time. It’s followed here by Shostakovich’s 15^th and final symphony.
$50-$240, Thursday through Saturday, April 17-19, Symphony Hall, 301 Mass. Ave., Boston

DANCE

Zoe Dance Company: O
This collaboration between Zoe Dance’s Callie Chapman and artist Christopher Konopka has been in the works for five years. Its central character, a historic woman who searches for meaning in the flight patterns of birds, serves as a reflection of our contemporary mania for data gathering and predictive modeling.
$25, Friday and Saturday, April 18-19, SomArt @ the Hive, 561 Windsor St., Somerville

THEATER

Sugar
Directed by Audrey Seraphin and written by Tara Moses (The Thanksgiving Play, Where We Belong), Fresh Ink Theater’s latest production centers on twentysomething Brooke, who’s down on her luck in most ways, bereft of a support system and constantly in the red despite working three jobs. To get out of her quagmire, she turns to sex work—and that’s when things get interesting.
$10-$35, Thursday, April 17 through May 3, Plaza Black Box Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston

Shucked
This comic musical earned nine Tony nominations for its Broadway run, including Best Musical. It takes place in Cob County, where corn is king—until the crop mysteriously starts dying. When the plucky Maizy recruits a questionable authority to solve the problem, she only ends up sowing more chaos.
$54.50-$220.25, through April 20, Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Actors’ Shakespeare Project takes inspiration from the famous club kids of turn-of-the-millennium New York City for director Maurice Emmanuel Parent’s production of the Bard’s fantasy frolic, which also puts a new spin on the play’s central four-way romantic kerfuffle.
$20-$74, through May 4, Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown

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, through April 27, Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon 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, 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, through April 20, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Roxbury

MOVIES

Cinema Her Way
Film critic and historian Marya E. Gates curated and will appear in person to present this set of four screenings, a companion to her new book collecting interviews with some of the great woman filmmakers. Titles include Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Love & Basketball, Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls, and Bette Gordon’s Variety and Luminous Motion.
$13-$15, Wednesday and Thursday, April 16-17, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

Sneaks
If a bunch of cars could carry an animated film, why not a bunch of shoes? Perhaps that was the question behind this family-friendly romp about a pair of collector kicks (Anthony Mackie and Chloe Bailey) forcibly separated from their owner by the fiendish Collector (Laurence Fishburne).
$11.59-$17.68, opens Friday, April 18, AMC Boston Common, 175 Tremont St., Boston

Sinners
Michael B. Jordan doubles down as a pair of twin brothers in Ryan Coogler’s action horror flick, set in a version of the Jim Crow South plagued both by systemic racism and vampires—and if you think the latter might be a metaphor for the former, you might be right.
$12.99-$16.49, opens Thursday, April 17, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

The Wedding Banquet
The second film as writer and director for Andrew Ahn (Spa Night, Fire Island) tells the story of of a group of queer friends (Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie Tran, and Han Gi-chan) whose scheme involving an IVF treatment and a green card marriage goes awry when one of their grandmothers gets wind of the marriage an takes it a little too seriously.
$15-$17, opens Friday, April 18, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Warfare
Better known for imagining fake wars in Civil War and 28 Days Later, Alex Garland teamed up with Iraq veteran Ray Mendoza to write and direct this intense and intimate depiction of a group of Navy SEALs posted in an Iraqi residence circa 2006.
$16.25-$18.75, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Cambridge

Drop
Meghann Fahy (The White Lotus) starts getting spammed by an anonymous stalker while on a date in this paranoia-inducing thriller from director Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day). As things escalate, the stalker threatens her loved one and even demands she kill for him. Who is this guy, and how much blood will be spilled before she finds out?
$10.99-$14.49, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Secret Mall Apartment
This documentary tells the story of a group of artists who lived undetected in the Providence Place Mall for four whole years in the 2000s. If you’re imagining a grimy squat, think again—these clever folks found a way to route the mall’s electricity, brought in furniture, and built a lockable door for their 750 square foot palace.
$12-$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

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 ailities, the unicorns fight back—and it ain’t pretty.
$16, Somerville Theater, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

Black Bag
After the innovative ghost thriller Presence, 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

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 (4/14/25)

MUSIC

Mary J. Blige
Mary J. Blige’s 2001 smash “Family Affair” is easily one of the most memorable hip hop/R&B jams ever, but it was only the midpoint of a 10 year streak that saw four of her albums hit the top of the charts. The “Queen of Hip Hop Soul” stops by the Garden on the heels of her new album Gratitude, released in November.
$59.50-$625, 7 p.m., TD Garden, 100 Legends Way, Boston

TUESDAY (4/15/25)

MUSIC

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
The gloomy balladeer from down under released his 18^th album, Wild Gods, last year, but he hasn’t toured in North America since 2018. His opener, St. Vincent, is worth the price of admission on her own—in fact, her latest, All Born Screaming, beat out Wild God and three other records for the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album this year.
$76.25-$128.10, 7 p.m., Agganis Arena, 925 Comm. Ave., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Seán Hewitt
Like many poets who reach a certain level of notoriety, British-Irish writer Seán Hewitt was asked if he had a novel in him, and he delivered Open, Heaven, a romance concerning two teenage boys in in early 2000s rural northern England: sheltered and shy James and magnetic new kid in town Luke.
Free, 7 p.m., Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

ALSO
Flour Bakery opens on Boston Common

WEDNESDAY (4/16/25)

MUSIC

Lizzie No
After generating a heap of buzz with her albums Hard Won and Vanity, folk singer-songwriter Lizzie No upped the ante with 2024’s Halfsies, a album conceived as a video game centering on the first-person perspective of protagonist Miss Freedomland—an idea that, kept in mind, only enhances the intimacy of lovely tracks like “The Heartbreak Store”.
$25-$28, 7:30 p.m., City Winery, 80 Beverly St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Jonathan Lethem
The celebrated novelist (Motherless Brooklyn, The Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City) discusses his new book Cellophane Bricks, detailing his love of visual art, which began when he was a kid hanging out in his dad’s studio and continued to develop in adulthood through collaborations with artist peers. In conversation with beloved writer-musician-mensch Damon Krukowski.
Free, 7 p.m., Porter Square Books, 1815 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

THURSDAY (4/17/25)

MUSIC

Denzel Curry
One of the architects of SoundCloud rap, Denzel Curry has survived the genre’s descent from relevance since the 2010s just fine. He’s out now in support of his mixtape-turned-album King of the Mischievous South. Its last single, the rave-up “Still in the Paint,” features a horn-blasting beat and pounding, breathless verses from Curry, LAZER DIM 700, and Bktherula.
$60.72-$82.59, 8 p.m., Roadrunner, 89 Guest St., Brighton

Nightly
This Nashville pop act blew up in the summer of 2016 thanks to Spotify boosting their debut single, the stomping relationship angst tale “XO”. Their third album, Songs To Drive To, which dropped in March, includes a cover of the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” that trades the original’s Replacements-aping angst for a more contemporary sense of dissociated melancholy.
$29, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

COMEDY

Matt Fulchiron
Some cultural commentators are declaring another irony epidemic, but Matt Fulchiron is not budging. With its anxiously glib delivery and intentionally dumb jokes, his act partly functions as a parody of standup, finding humor in the absurdity of his presence on stage and the banality of everyday language.
$20-$25, 8 p.m., The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge

BOOKS + READINGS

Jon King
Gang of Four’s show on Sunday at Crystal Ballroom is sold out, but you can catch the legendary British post-punk act’s frontman Jon King on Thursday in Cambridge, discussing his new, double-subtitled memoir To Hell with Poverty!: A Class Act: Inside the Gang of Four with Globe music journalist Jim Sullivan.
Free, 7 p.m., Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

FRIDAY (4/18/25)

MUSIC

Ebo Taylor and Pat Thomas
A living legend who helped shape both highlife and Afrobeat, 89-year-old Ghanaian musician Ebo Taylor presides over the stage from an armchair like a king on a throne. Faithful collaborator Pat Thomas, an icon in his own right, joins him on this American tour.
$49.25, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

LA LOM
LA LOM is an acronym for the Los Angeles League of Musicians, which sounds like it should be an orchestra but is actually a rockabilly-styled trio, led by the subtly brilliant guitarist Zac Sokolow and playing uniquely Californian mix of surf rock and cumbia that seems destined to show up in a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack.
$34.16, 6:30 p.m., Royale, 89 Guest St., Brighton

VARIETY

Jazz Urbane Café: Art Forward
Dr. Bill Banfield’s Imagine Orchestra, pianist Dr. John Paul McGee, movement artist Wyatt Jackson, filmmaker Karina Choudhury, and others join forces for this cross-disciplinary tribute to creativity and artistic community.
$25-$35, 7:30 p.m., Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

HISTORY

Boston 250 Launch: Anniversary of Paul Revere’s Ride
It’s been 250 years since Paul Revere made his famous ride, and you can retrace his steps Friday with this series of events including a drone show over the harbor, a theatrical performance, and more. It starts in the North End with a Revere reenactor’s departure and ends with the illumination of the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown.
Free, 5:30 p.m.-10 p.m., starts at Paul Revere House, 19 North Sq., Boston

SATURDAY (4/19/25)

MUSIC

Penny & Sparrow
This Texan duo’s new album Lefty shapeshifts a few times across its 20 songs, inhabiting exceedingly gentle folk, dreamy electronic pop, 2010s-style lite Americana, classic country, torch song soul, and more, somehow managing to still sound, through it all, like the same band.
$38, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

Yukimi
Singer for the Swedish band Little Dragon, Yukimi Nagano dropped her debut solo album For You at the end of March, and it’s an intriguing piece of hallucinatory electronic R&B, emphasizing certain pleasantly weird elements of Little Dragon’s diverse sonic palette and pushing them into new territory.
$48.37, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

COMEDY

Joe List
Though he recently started appearing in films, the amusingly misanthropic Joe List is best known for his standup comedy. His new special Small Ball comes out in May. “People mistake my weakness for kindness,” he says in the trailer. “I’ve had friends for like, 25 years, they’re like ‘You’re always there for me,’ I’m like ‘I don’t want to be.’”
$51.50, 7 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

CONVENTIONS

Wicked Comic Con
Special guest artists at this free gathering of comics geeks include Craig Rousseau (Harley Quinn), Larry Stroman (Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor), Mike McKone (Exiles), Shawn McManus (Fables), and many more. As always, there will also be a packed exhibition floor, lots of special events, and more than a few elaborately costumed attendees.
Free, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Westin Boston Seaport District, 425 Summer St., Boston

SUNDAY (4/20/25)

MUSIC

Dave East
Dave East came on the hip hop scene in the 2010s with a somewhat vintage East Coast style that set him apart from dominant trends like trap. Though he hasn’t released a solo album since 2023’s Fortune Favors the Bold, he’s stayed busy with collaborations like 2025’s The Final Call, with Ransom, and 2024’s Living Proof, with araabMUZIK.
$41.50, 8 p.m., Big Night Live, 110 Causeway St., Boston

MONDAY (4/21/25)

CITYWIDE CELEBRATION

The Boston Marathon
Boston’s marathon isn’t just any marathon—it’s the world’s oldest, going back 129 years. You can watch the action at several places along the route from Hopkinton to Copley Square. There’s also a livestream at the ticketed Mile 27 at City Hall Plaza, where you can grab a beer and enjoy a post-race party with live music from Dalton and the Sheriffs.
Free, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m., various locations, Boston area

COMEDY

Bingo! with Will Pottorff
If your brain is already reeling this Monday from the prospect of another week of work and headlines, why not turn it off for a while and play a little “unhinged” bingo? It takes absolutely no skill, there will be jokes, and you might even win a prize. Your brain will thank you upon reboot.
Free, 7 p.m., The Comedy Studio, 5 John F. Kennedy St., Cambridge

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 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 arrange for a private tour via an online form or opt for a self-guided experience whenever you want.
Free (self-guided), 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)

Christian Marclay: Doors
It took Christian Marclay over 10 years to carefully craft this video piece out of hundreds of clips of people opening and closing doors in films, resulting in a surreal journey between cinematic universes. For Marclay, doors evoke a “fear and anxiety we associate with the unknown, but also anticipation and potential.”
$20, Thursday, April 17 through September 1, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon
How High the Moon traces the 50-year career of abstract painter Stanley Whitney, showing his early work and the wide-ranging inspirations, from jazz to quilts to architecture, informing the joyfully pulsing grids of color that made him a late in life success in the early 2000s.
$20, Thursday, April 17 through September 1, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Vincent Van Gogh’s Camille Roulin, November–December 1888, from the MFA’s “Van Gogh: The Roulin Family Portraits.” / Photo by Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

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

Leonora Carrington: Dream Weaver
This is the first New England exhibition for Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, spanning 60 years of her career, most of which she spent as a British expatriate in Mexico. Carrington’s drolly bizarre and mysterious works, equally amusing and unsettling, brought a gothic sensibility to the typical Surrealist fascination with dreams, mythology, and the unconscious.
Free, through June 1, Rose Art Museum, 415 South St., Waltham

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, 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

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

Courtesy

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

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

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.

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

Want to suggest an event? Email us.