Events on Friday, July 4
Friday 7/ 4 @ Co-Prosperity Sphere
Tonight's Lumpen magazine event combines creative spectacle, reckless partying, and political activism into a subversive celebration of independence. Three years ago,...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Petrillo Music Shell
After kicking off his career with San Francisco punks the Nuns, Alejandro Escovedo ushered in the alt-country movement with Austin bands...
Friday 7/ 4 @ SmartBar
What could be more American than some hometown boosterism, a little bit of regional competition, and a lot of butt-shaking bass?...
Ongoing Events
Friday 7/ 4 @ Carrie Secrist Gallery
During the quiet months of summer, dealers often turn to group exhibitions as an easy way to trot out the work...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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....
Friday 7/ 4 @ Apollo Theater
Whether you love or fear musicals, you can delight in Baby Wants Candy, a fully improvised comedy show with song, dance,...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Various locations
Let's be honest — exercising in gyms is boring and expensive. But the Chicago Park District has a solution to the...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Portraying Food (and the Absence of It)
Friday 7/ 4 @ Walsh Gallery
Interest in Chinese art has reached a fever pitch, but Wu Hung has always been ahead of the curve. Since 1999,...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Music Box Theatre
Earthquakes and social protest make headlines, but a far more complex and subtle catastrophe is taking shape in the shadow of...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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....
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Green Lantern
Dynamic fiber and performance artist Amanda Browder spins into Chicago again — this time with a stuffed tornado in tow. Browder...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
Chicago theatergoers might know better, but for a long time, most people only recognized Tracy Letts as "that guy from the...
Brian Ulrich and Jason Lazarus
Friday 7/ 4 @ City Gallery
Jason Lazarus and Brian Ulrich take an irreverent glimpse behind the scenes of the art market with About Art, their photographic...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Gene Siskel Film Center
Episodes of VH1's I Love the '80s and 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders might keep memories of OXO's "Whirly Girl" alive, but...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Hyde Park Art Center
Since 1978, the Centre Pompidou in Paris has paired visual artists with choreographers and dancers at its annual Vidéodanse festival....
Friday 7/ 4 @ Jane Addams Hull House Museum
This bring-your-own-lunch gathering of handicrafters is held in honor of artist, educator, and social activist Ellen Gates Starr, who historically co-founded...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Museum Campus
Just admit it, you've ogled the sleek modern houses you pass on certain streets and wished you could peek inside. The...
Friday 7/ 4 @ moniquemeloche gallery
A good group exhibition can feel like a free buffet serving top-quality market produce; it all looks so enticing, and you...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Music Box Theatre
Long before David Byrne ventured into lush world music, he was a gawky, riveting white boy in an oversized suit, all...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Chicago Cultural Center
In Three Hours Between Planes, co-curators Marco Poloni and Eiko Grimberg find the common themes running through the work of 11...
Friday 7/ 4 @ threewalls
Michael Jones McKean's ramshackle constructions combine disparate found objects with wood, clay, and papier-mâché. His work has a strong physical presence,...
When Did You Last See Your Father?
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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?...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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 —...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Facets Cinémathèque
Paris' Père-Lachaise — one of the most-visited cemeteries in the world — is the final resting place for a stunning number...
Alex Katz: Subject to Reversal
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Mess Hall
Regarding those who toil on Madison Avenue, the acid-tongued Bill Hicks once riffed, "You are Satan's little helpers… kill yourself, seriously…...
Friday 7/ 4 @ 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...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Chicago Architecture Foundation
Millennium Park has only been open officially for four years, but it's already a Chicago landmark. And like most things in...
Friday 7/ 4 @ Music Box Theatre
In My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin fashions both a valentine and a Dear John letter to his hometown, with a hypnagogic blur...
