Events on Thursday, July 17
Public Enemy: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Thursday 7/17 @ Chicago Cultural Center, Studio Theater
Public Enemy's classic 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was a ringing indictment of ghetto...
Standard Operating Procedure and W.J.T. Mitchell
Thursday 7/17 @ School of the Art Institute of Chicago Ballroom
In the wake of Abu Ghraib, the potential power of a single image is brutally apparent. Tonight, a joint film screening...
Thursday 7/17 @ Lincoln Park
Some of Chicago's summer food festivals are overblown spectacles, rather than gastronomic delight. But Green City Market's Summer BBQ Fest has...
Thursday 7/17 @ Doc Films
Ambitious and influential filmmaker D.W. Griffith is a titan of early cinema. After working independently for years, Griffith joined Paramount Pictures...
Pitchfork Music Festival Preview
Thursday 7/17 @ Millennium Park
Recent Sub Pop signees Fleet Foxes are raking in the adulation for their self-titled full-length debut, but they deserve the hubbub...
Thursday 7/17 @ Lakeshore Theater
Though they've been together since 1998, the Watson Twins only really rose to prominence after Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis tapped the...
Ongoing Events
Alex Katz: Subject to Reversal
Thursday 7/17 @ Richard Gray Gallery
At 81, Alex Katz has only recently emerged as one of America's major contemporary artists. The Richard Gray Gallery shows why...
Thursday 7/17 @ Various locations
The father of gonzo journalism and a '60s-counterculture icon, Hunter S. Thompson revolutionized American prose with his drug-fueled, first-person narrative style....
Thursday 7/17 @ The Second City e.t.c.
From the director of the recent hit Between Barack and a Hard Place comes another election-season winner, Campaign Supernova!, performed by...
Thursday 7/17 @ Museum of Contemporary Photography
Recognized as a fixture in Americana, the backyard has, over the previous two decades, become a space favored almost as much...
Thursday 7/17 @ Various locations
Let's be honest — exercising in gyms is boring and expensive. But the Chicago Park District has a solution to the...
Thursday 7/17 @ Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool
Escape the roaring cars on Lake Shore Drive and the crowds at Lincoln Park Zoo by slipping through the unobtrusive entrance...
Thursday 7/17 @ threewalls
Michael Jones McKean's ramshackle constructions combine disparate found objects with wood, clay, and papier-mâché. His work has a strong physical presence,...
Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File
Thursday 7/17 @ Facets Cinémathèque
The tragic turn of events surrounding Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko's poisoning and subsequent death unfolded like a seedy crime novel. The...
Thursday 7/17 @ The Art Institute of Chicago
In his first solo museum exhibition, Mario Ybarra, Jr. presents a witty comparison of Chicago and Los Angeles through the exploits...
Thursday 7/17 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema
The Wackness is the sort of movie whose most redeeming qualities are least likely to be advertised in its trailers. About...
Thursday 7/17 @ Museum of Contemporary Art
Local artist Gisela Insuaste mines the terrain of personal recollection and material culture for her multidisciplinary installations. In painting, drawing, and...
Thursday 7/17 @ Royal George Theatre Center
Aspiring Broadway composer/lyricists trying to attract angel investors usually consider more contemporary material than Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press....
Thursday 7/17 @ Hyde Park Art Center
Since 1978, the Centre Pompidou in Paris has paired visual artists with choreographers and dancers at its annual Vidéodanse festival....
Several Landscapes and 3 Landscapes in the Modern Style
Thursday 7/17 @ Western Exhibitions
If you relish summer group exhibitions and air conditioning, head to the two landscape-themed shows at Western Exhibitions. Director Scott Speh...
Thursday 7/17 @ Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary
If nothing else, taking up birdwatching gives you a convenient excuse to bring terms like "Magnificent Frigatebird" and "Purple Gallinule" into...
Thursday 7/17 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema
With its sunflower hues poking through England's grime, Brick Lane cleaves to the trajectory of an East-to-West immigration tale. Teenager Nazneen...
Thursday 7/17 @ International Museum of Surgical Science
For decades, the International Museum of Surgical Science has spotlighted the macabre wonders of invasive surgery. But along with historical displays...
Thursday 7/17 @ Gene Siskel Film Center
What do you do if the only way to save your job is to fly off to India and train your...
Thursday 7/17 @ The Empty Bottle
Chicago never disappoints come festival season. Even the smaller satellite fests — like this week's three-day We (heart) Chicago — come...
Thursday 7/17 @ Russell Bowman Fine Art
Chicago Imagism began with a group of artists from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who first showed their...
Thursday 7/17 @ Gene Siskel Film Center
Neo-realist filmmaker Luchino Visconti adapted Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Leopard with an elegant, epic eye. While Claudia Cardinale...
Thursday 7/17 @ Chicago Cultural Center
Jim Tansley's abstract paintings and drawings combine seemingly familiar lines with expanses of soft color to create arrangements that appear both...
Thursday 7/17 @ The Arts Club of Chicago
David Hockney gained recognition in the '60s for his flat, single-panel paintings of swimming pools, but he also creates more narrative-based...
When Did You Last See Your Father?
Thursday 7/17 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema
Adapted from writer Blake Morrison's 1993 memoir about his bullying father's death from cancer, When Did You Last See Your Father?...
Thursday 7/17 @ The Art Institute of Chicago
You may not have noticed, but the Art Institute's Department of Prints and Drawings has been running in stealth mode —...
Thursday 7/17 @ Music Box Theatre
Earthquakes and social protest make headlines, but a far more complex and subtle catastrophe is taking shape in the shadow of...
Brian Ulrich and Jason Lazarus
Thursday 7/17 @ City Gallery
Jason Lazarus and Brian Ulrich take an irreverent glimpse behind the scenes of the art market with About Art, their photographic...
It Came from the Neo-Futurarium
Thursday 7/17 @ The Neo-Futurarium
Substandard cinema usually has a special place on Blockbuster's back shelves, but the Neo-Futurists drag it back into the spotlight by...
Thursday 7/17 @ Block Museum, Northwestern University
What effect did Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species have on the development of early modern architecture? What can we...
Thursday 7/17 @ Museum Campus
Just admit it, you've ogled the sleek modern houses you pass on certain streets and wished you could peek inside. The...
Thursday 7/17 @ Packer Schopf Gallery
Figurative painter Jane Fisher returns to Chicago with her latest series of paintings: a simple celebration of humanity entitled Big Heads...
Thursday 7/17 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema
Herein lies living proof that the French can spin a gorgeous existentialist drama in any genre. Pediatrician Alex (François Cluzet) has...
Thursday 7/17 @ Museum of Contemporary Art
It's easy to forget that art star and auction darling Jeff Koons made his name as a provocateur. His Made in...
Thursday 7/17 @ Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
Chicago theatergoers might know better, but for a long time, most people only recognized Tracy Letts as "that guy from the...
Thursday 7/17 @ The ComedySportz Theatre
Although Improv Match Game panelists concoct impromptu answers to broad questions, it's less an exercise in traditional improv comedy than a...
Thursday 7/17 @ National Museum of Mexican Art
It may be a country founded by those who arrived from elsewhere, but the United States arguably has a long way...
Thursday 7/17 @ Storefront Theater
Bloody Bess isn't a pirate story for children, and it's definitely not your standard, polite downtown theater — the show's full...
Thursday 7/17 @ Garfield Park Conservatory
If the concrete trek and throngs of spectators at Friday's Fourth of July festivities leave you pining for something a little...
Discarded Paintings by Gifted Amateurs
Thursday 7/17 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
Whereas most found-art exhibitions make aesthetic objects out of forgotten knick-knacks, the focus of this exhibition is, more literally, fine art...
Thursday 7/17 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema
Some character actors should really never be leading men (Jude Law), and some just haven't been given the chance. Richard Jenkins...
Thursday 7/17 @ moniquemeloche gallery
A good group exhibition can feel like a free buffet serving top-quality market produce; it all looks so enticing, and you...
Thursday 7/17 @ Music Box Theatre
In My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin fashions both a valentine and a Dear John letter to his hometown, with a hypnagogic blur...
