Events on Wednesday, April 1

Vice President Al Gore

Special Event

Vice President Al Gore

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ The Chicago Theatre

Author, activist, entrepreneur, and Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner Al Gore, the popularly elected 42nd President of the United States... 

Ongoing Events

Prairie Avenue House Museums

Get Social

Prairie Avenue House Museums

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Glessner House Museum

Chicago's historic Prairie Avenue district — the site of the 1812 Fort Dearborn Massacre — became known after the Great Chicago... 

Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary

City Gems

Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ 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... 

<em>Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth</em>

Art

Becoming Edvard Munch

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ The Art Institute of Chicago

Although blockbuster exhibitions often reaffirm melodramatic clichés about tragic artists, the Art Institute of Chicago attempts a "myth-busting" show with Becoming... 

<em>Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum</em>

Special Event

Chic Chicago

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Chicago History Museum

In this glittering costume exhibition, the Chicago History Museum presents a rarely seen collection of haute couture fashions designed for the... 

<em>America: All Better!</em>

Comedy

America: All Better!

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ The Second City

The 2008 election may have delivered a ray of hope, but storm clouds still hang above us. That's the uneasy premise... 

Graceland Cemetery

City Gems

Graceland Cemetery

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Graceland Cemetery

Hidden away on Chicago's north side, this secret memento of the city's architectural history is a large, rambling Victorian-style cemetery. Filled... 

<em>Don't Dress for Dinner</em>

Theatre

Don't Dress for Dinner

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Royal George Theatre Center

A classic farce as broad and French as the Seine, Don't Dress for Dinner is a manic amalgam of mistaken identity,... 

<em>Gomorrah</em>

Film

Gomorrah

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Music Box Theatre

Complex mob-flick Gomorrah shows the realities and ironies that many conventional mafia films only romanticize. The drama, based on Robert Saviano's... 

Coats for Cubs

Special Event: Benefit

Coats for Cubs

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Buffalo Exchange locations

Feeling guilty about the fur-lined gloves, vintage mink stole, or old chinchilla coat hanging in your closet? Fret not, all will... 

<em>Polaroids: Mapplethorpe</em>

Art: Photography

Polaroids: Mapplethorpe

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Block Museum, Northwestern University

The name Robert Mapplethorpe might bring to mind formal photographs of flowers or homoerotic figure studies — or more likely, the... 

<em>Abandoned Demolition</em>: New Painting by Andy Paczos

Art

Abandoned Demolition: New Painting by Andy Paczos

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Hyde Park Art Center

Once a heavy-industry mecca, now a service-industry hub, Chicago has a changing industrial history that's ripe for artistic examination. Painter Andy... 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Dance

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Auditorium Theatre

Recently anointed American Cultural Ambassador to the World by Congress, Alvin Ailey's venerable institution celebrates half a century with a world... 

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

City Gems

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ 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... 

Soup and Bread

Food/Wine

Soup and Bread

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ The Hideout

Struck down again by the annual arctic blast, we all just want a steaming bowl of something to make us happy.... 

<em>Valentino: The Last Emperor</em>

Film: Documentary

Valentino: The Last Emperor

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Various locations

The titular allusion of Matt Tyrnauer's warts-and-all portrait of Italian couturier Valentino Garavani to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1987 epic is an apt... 

Marvin E. Newman & Yasuhiro Ishimito

Art: Photography

Marvin E. Newman & Yasuhiro Ishimito

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Stephen Daiter Gallery

In adjacent exhibitions, Stephen Daiter Gallery reunites Marvin Newman and Yasuhiro Ishimoto, two master photographers who became friends in the early... 

Angelina Gualdoni: <em>Proposals for Remnants</em>

Art

Angelina Gualdoni

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Kavi Gupta Gallery

In her previous paintings, Angelina Gualdoni depicted modern-day ruins with a mix of naturalistic detail and hazy atmospherics. Her latest exhibition,... 

<em>Loaded: Hunting Culture in America</em>

Art

Loaded: Hunting Culture in America

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College Chicago

Hunting is one of our country's semi-submerged traditions, stretching well beyond the red states. Gathering a varied group of insiders, outside... 

<em>Wait Until Dark</em>

Theatre

Wait Until Dark

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Court Theatre at the University of Chicago

In a time of creeping horrors like war, recession, terrorism and Bernie Madoff, there's perverse satisfaction to be gleaned from a... 

<em>Milk</em>

Film

Milk

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Various locations

Gus van Sant's highly anticipated biopic of Harvey Milk — the nation's first openly gay man to hold a major elected... 

Paul Chan

Art

Paul Chan

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ The Renaissance Society

Artist Paul Chan may well be one of the wittiest and most astute political commentators of our time. The Renaissance Society... 

Anne Chu

Art

Anne Chu

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Donald Young Gallery

New York-based artist Anne Chu's drawings, prints, and sculptures conjure mythology reminiscent of Kiki Smith. Bear Head (all works 2008), cast... 

Steppenwolf presents <em>Art</em>

Theatre

Steppenwolf presents Art

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Steppenwolf Theatre Company

If your best friend spent a fortune on an all-white painting you hated, could you bite your tongue and praise it,... 

Robert Davis and Michael Langlois: <em>House of the Rising Sun</em>

Art

Robert Davis and Michael Langlois

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Chicago Cultural Center

Collaborative artists Robert Davis and Michael Langlois reconfigure their LA show of the same name for a three-month stint in the... 

Dance Dance Party Party

Party

Dance Dance Party Party

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Perpetual Motion Dance Studio

Since its inception in 2006 by two New York dance enthusiasts, Dance Dance Party Party has developed into a fully-fledged, ladies-only... 

<em>Tokyo!</em>

Film

Tokyo!

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ AMC Loews Pipers Alley 4

An imaginative ode to Japan's capital told in three parts, Tokyo! is cleverly linked by themes of alienation, identity, and destiny.... 

Sigmar Polke: <em>Lens Paintings</em>

Art

Sigmar Polke

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ The Arts Club of Chicago

One of the giants of post-war painting, Sigmar Polke is an irreverant experimentalist — an artist of many moves whose work... 

<em>PhotoDimensional</em>

Art

PhotoDimensional

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Museum of Contemporary Photography

In PhotoDimensional, photography becomes sculptural through Heather Mekkelson's recreations of disaster photographs; lifelike in Bettina Hoffmann's video rotating around a still... 

<em>Altogether Mutable: The Work of Mary Lou Zelazny</em>

Art

Mary Lou Zelazny

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Hyde Park Art Center

Spanning nearly 30 years, the skillful paintings in Mary Lou Zelazny's mid-career retrospective center on a cast of weird creatures, shapely... 

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Dance

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Harris Theater for Music and Dance

Andrea Miller, founder of New York's Gallim Dance, kneads the vision of mentor Ohad Naharin into the idiosyncrasies of her aggressive,... 

<em>Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe</em>

Art

Buckminster Fuller

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Museum of Contemporary Art

Buckminster Fuller was a man of vision and contradiction. The twentieth-century architect and inventor was well ahead of his time, yet... 

The Picture Tells the Story: The Drawings of Joseph E. Yoakum

Art

The Picture Tells the Story: The Drawings of Joseph E. Yoakum

Wednesday 4/ 1 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

An exhibition of Joseph Yoakum’s visionary landscapes, curated by Mark Pascale, caretaker of Whitney Halstead’s collection bequeathed to the Art Institute...