Events on Friday, July 30
Friday 7/30 @ Poetry Foundation
Organized by Poetry magazine and other independent Chicago publications, this six-year-old institution offers multitudes of freebie magazines, books, and broadsides that...
Friday 7/30 @ Beat Kitchen
True to his promise to play any city where at least 300 Facebook users promise to attend, Paul F. Tompkins returns...
Ongoing Events
Friday 7/30 @ Victory Gardens Biograph Theater
Based on cast and crew alone, Victory Gardens' A Guide for the Perplexed is perhaps the most anticipated show of the...
Friday 7/30 @ Museum of Contemporary Photography
Concurrent with her first monograph of the same name, Paula McCartney's show Birdwatching features a provocative series of beautifully composed, lush...
Life Lines: The Drawings of Charles Steffen
Friday 7/30 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
In many ways a beau ideal figure of "outsider art," Charles Steffen studied art at IIT before suffering a mental breakdown...
Friday 7/30 @ Museum of Contemporary Photography
The influential American conceptual artist John Baldessari — gadfly to contemporary art theory and master of image-text paintings — is represented...
Friday 7/30 @ Various Chicago locations
It's the 100-year anniversary of Ox-Bow, the art school and artists' residency in Michigan; and to celebrate the centennial, there are...
Everyday Adventures Growing Up
Friday 7/30 @ The Art Institute of Chicago
AIC says: The world is an exciting and frightening place for a young child. It's fun to make a new friend,...
Friday 7/30 @ The Second City
Does the title of this sketch comedy show refer to the cast or the audience? The answer, of course, is both....
Friday 7/30 @ Theater on the Lake
The Gift Theatre Company, whose current show, Suicide, Inc., is the surprise, critically acclaimed theatrical triumph of the summer, remounts another...
Friday 7/30 @ Museum of Contemporary Art
No better excuse to clear the dust bunnies from a collection of old favorites than to put together a best-of show....
Friday 7/30 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
Intuit says: This retrospective features 30 pieces of Charles Steffen's work, covering a variety of imagery he knew in his limited...
Friday 7/30 @ Chicago Cultural Center
Howard Finster, often described as one of the most important folk artists of the 20th century, was an "outsider" artist whose...
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Daniel Albrigo
Friday 7/30 @ Western Exhibitions
The fact that Genesis P-Orridge had his teeth removed and replaced with gold casts — the act which inspired this exhibit...
Friday 7/30 @ Peregrine Program
Fresh off a stacked, Brion Gysin-nodding collaborative performance in Brooklyn that also included work by Scott Treleaven and Genesis P-Orridge, Terence...
The Absolute Best Friggin' Time of Your Life
Friday 7/30 @ The Second City e.t.c.
The electric defibrillator paddles that briefly appear onstage during the Second City e.t.c.'s new sketch revue are an apt metaphor for...
Friday 7/30 @ The Art Institute of Chicago
Anyone with even a fleeting interest in photography should go see Henri Cartier-Bresson's retrospective at the Art Institute. Often heralded as...
Friday 7/30 @ Gene Siskel Film Center
Siskel Center says: In a change-of-pace from her previous, more contemporary films, Catherine Breillat engineers an elegant but provocative period-piece based...
Friday 7/30 @ MCA Chicago
The first week of the MCA's returning Here/Not Here series opens with Club Nutz, a tiny mobile nightclub dubbed "the world's...
Friday 7/30 @ Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art
Two of Chicago's central and most esteemed print institutions — also known for their community work and collaboration — present a...
Works on Paper from the MCA Collection
Friday 7/30 @ Museum of Contemporary Art
In the MCA's latest exhibit, an astutely chosen collection of works on paper depict exaggerated conflict, addressing various allegorical, emblematic, and...
Friday 7/30 @ moniquemeloche gallery
Don't just live with less; make art with less. Jason Middlebrook, a pioneer of sustainability art, has focused in the past...
Friday 7/30 @ Angel Island
Storefront-theatre company Mary-Arrchie consistently delivers provocative, innovative work. Their latest, the Midwest premiere of a show originally concocted by Austin's Rule...
Friday 7/30 @ Apollo Theater
Whether you love or fear musicals, you can delight in Baby Wants Candy, a fully improvised comedy show with song, dance,...
Cauleen Smith and Adia Millett
Friday 7/30 @ threewalls
threewalls says: This July and August threewalls again hosts their summer residency, this year in conjunction with the Studio Chicago programming....
Friday 7/30 @ The Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute's mashup of art and music through a wide grouping of photo and video is an untidy combination —...
Friday 7/30 @ Steppenwolf Garage Theatre
16th Street Theater, now in its third season, keeps proving its robustness and strong eye for talent and collaboration — it's...
26th Annual Newberry Library Book Fair
Friday 7/30 @ The Newberry Library
With countless books less than $2 a pop, the Newberry Library Book Fair remains one of the city's most popular events...
Friday 7/30 @ Hyde Park Art Center
Chicago Imagist Roger Brown is perhaps nearly as famous in Chicago now as a collector of art, particularly for the Roger...
Friday 7/30 @ Catherine Edelman Gallery
A picture may not lie, but that doesn't mean it tells the full story. Proof, a group exhibition the Catherine Edelman...
Friday 7/30 @ Thomas Robertello Gallery
A spectacular lineup, ranging from emerging artists to Chicago institutions, graces this summer group exhibition at Thomas Robertello Gallery, where the...
Friday 7/30 @ Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
A Parallelogram, the final play in one of Steppenwolf's strongest seasons in recent years, pairs longtime Steppenwolf collaborator, actor, and playwright...
Chicago Stories and H.C. Westermann
Friday 7/30 @ The Art Institute of Chicago
This AIC exhibition charts the wild terrain of the Chicago post-war art scene — the adverse eccentrics, stylists, and self-taught artists...
Friday 7/30 @ Johalla Projects
In conjunction with the new, Yeti-published book of the same title, Art of Touring showcases a bevy of strong (non-musical) art...
Friday 7/30 @ Chicago Urban Art Society
In Sweet Tea, Ray Noland reminds us once again that overtly political art can still be fresh and vigorous, not to...
Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy
Friday 7/30 @ MCA Chicago
The Alexander Calder exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art tries to reposition the artist's legacy. The selections from Calder's work...
Friday 7/30 @ Glessner House Museum
Chicago's historic Prairie Avenue district — the site of the 1812 Fort Dearborn Massacre — became known after the Great Chicago...
Friday 7/30 @ Museum of Contemporary Art
When a Modern Wing museumgoer accidentally stepped on Robert Smithson's floor-displayed Chalk-Mirror Displacement last month, jokes about the artist's pet themes...
Friday 7/30 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
Intuit's new Peter Anton show provides a productive and evocative foil for the museum's overlapping show of drawings by Charles Steffen,...
Friday 7/30 @ Linda Warren Gallery
Epic in scale and addressing issues that in other hands could have become sanctimonious — deforestation, advertising speak — Lora Fosberg's...
Friday 7/30 @ Various Chicago locations
If it weren't for a little lady named Lisbeth Salander, and her creator Stieg Larsson, Americans might forever think of Sweden...
Friday 7/30 @ Smart Museum of Art
Mid-Century: "Good Design" in Europe and America, 1850–1950 Between 1850 and 1950, progressive artists, designers, and architects decisively reshaped the everyday...
Land Without End and Other Works by Theo Leffmann
Friday 7/30 @ Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art and Block Cinema
The fiber art of Chicagoan Theo Leffmann (1911–1996) evokes the ancient and the exotic, echoing pre-Columbian and non-Western processes and forms...
Urban Suite Fridays w/ DJ 33 1/3
Friday 7/30 @ The Shrine
The Shrine brings you URBAN SUITE, the sexiest Friday night in Chicago! DJ 33 1/3 spins Hip Hop, Soul, Funk, R...
Rewind: 1970s to 1990s - Works from the MCA Collection
Friday 7/30 @ MCA Chicago
During its forty-year history, the MCA has distinguished itself with groundbreaking exhibitions that have contributed substantially to the evolving history...
New Sculptures, Paintings and Photography by Coarse
Friday 7/30 @ Rotofugi
Works for the coarse world began in 2003, when German artists Mark Landwehr and Sven Waschk started a distinct style of...
Friday 7/30 @ Smart Museum of Art
Ben Shahn and the Hickman Story In early 1947, a fire ripped through the one-room attic of a tenement building on...
Almost There: A Portrait of Peter Anton
Friday 7/30 @ Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art
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Friday 7/30 @ The ComedySportz Theatre
Our long running main stage show "ComedySportz" offers a unique blend of fast funny improv comedy that is appropriate for all...
Friday 7/30 @ Chicago History Museum
A new costume exhibition shows the colorful history of wedding attire! I Do! presents 45 dresses, plus accessories, corsets, men's attire,...
