Imagine Van Gogh
Date: April 1
Time: Varies
Location: SoWa Power Station, 550 Harrison Avenue, Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.imagine-vangogh.com/
The very concept of Imagine Van Gogh is grandiose: visitors wander amongst giant projections of the artist’s paintings, swept away by every brushstroke, detail, painting medium and colour. Immersed in an extraordinary experience where all senses become fully awakened, viewers will be truly moved by such spectacular beauty. Visitors discover more than 200 of Van Gogh’s paintings, including his most famous works, painted between 1888 and 1890 in Provence, Arles and Auvers-sur-Oise.
Turner’s Modern World
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/turners-modern-world
One of Britain’s greatest artists, J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) lived and worked at the peak of the industrial revolution, when steam replaced sail, machine power replaced manpower, and wars, political
unrest, and social reforms transformed society. “Turner’s Modern World” explores how this artist, more than any of his contemporaries, embraced these changes and developed an innovative painting style to better capture the new world.
This landmark exhibition brings together more than 100 paintings, watercolors, drawings, and sketchbooks by Turner, including Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps (1812) from Tate Britain, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834 (1835) from the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the MFA’s own Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming On) (1840). These vivid and dramatic compositions demonstrate Turner’s commitment to depicting the great events and developments of his time, from technological advances to causes such as abolition and political reform.
Real Photo Postcards Pictures from a Changing Nation
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/real-photo-postcards
In 1903, at the height of the worldwide craze for postcards, the Eastman Kodak Company unveiled a new product: the postcard camera. The device exposed a postcard-sized negative that could print directly onto a blank card, capturing scenes in extraordinary detail. Portable and easy to use, the camera heralded a new way of making postcards. Suddenly almost anyone could make photo postcards, as a hobby or as a business. Other companies quickly followed in Kodak’s wake, and soon photographic postcards joined the billions upon billions of printed cards in circulation before World War II.
Real photo postcards, as such photographic cards are called today, captured aspects of the world that their commercially published cousins never could. Big postcard publishers tended to play it safe, issuing sets that showed celebrated sites from towns across the United States like town halls, historic mills, and post offices. But the photographers who walked the streets or set up temporary studios worked fast and cheap. They could take a risk on a scene that might appeal to only a few, or capture a moment that would otherwise have been lost to posterity. As the Victorian formality of earlier photography fell away, shop interiors, construction sites, train wrecks, and people acting silly all began to appear on real photo postcards, capturing everyday life on film like never before.
Featuring more than 300 works drawn from the MFA’s Leonard A. Lauder Postcard Archive, this exhibition takes an in-depth look at real photo postcards and the stories they tell about the US in the early 20th century. The cards range from the dramatic and tragic to the inexplicable, funny, and just plain weird. Along the way, they also reveal truths about a country that was growing and changing with the times—and experiencing the social and economic strains that came with those upheavals.
Today, real photo postcards open up the past in ways that can surprise and puzzle. Few of them come with explanations, so over and over again even the most striking images leave only questions: “why?” and sometimes even “what?” “Real Photo Postcards: Pictures from a Changing Nation” is a forceful reminder that memory and historical understanding are evanescent.
Engineering Design Workshop, Powered by MathWork
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 1 Science Park Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.mos.org/explore/exhibits/engineering-design-workshop
The star of this Blue Wing exhibit is our newly expanded, staffed Design Challenges Hub. The engineering design process is front and center as you create, test, and improve your own designs. Self-guided interactive stations in our Engineering Design Labs invite you to design, build, and test your own solutions to fun engineering and computer science challenges like Sift & Sort and Dive & Splash.
Budding engineers can practice developing their core skills in two young learner zones. Fast forward and our Engineering Stories vignettes show how people from a wide range of fields use engineering to address complex problems.
This newest Museum experience blends the creativity of hands-on engineering with state-of-the-art tools and data analysis delivered by MATLAB, the flagship product of MathWorks. For more than twenty years, MathWorks has partnered with the Museum to demonstrate the power of STEM to solve problems and make the world a better place.
Project Vaccine: Our Best Defense
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 1 Science Park Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.mos.org/exhibits/project-vaccine-exhibit
The Museum is proud to introduce their newest exhibition, Project Vaccine: Our Best Defense, a key element of our ongoing educational and public health initiative. Learn about vaccines and their development, viral transmission, and the many steps and countless professionals involved in the creation of—and rollout of— vaccines.
A Seat at the Table: Digital Exhibit
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: Columbia Point, 210 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.emkinstitute.org/explore-the-institute/exhibits/a-seat-at-the-table
“A Seat at the Table” exhibit is inspired by Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm’s words and work toward creating a more inclusive democracy. The first phase of the exhibit opened in October 2018 and is made possible with the generous support of the Fund II Foundation.
In 1968, Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman elected to Congress. Four years later, she became the first black woman candidate to run for the presidential nomination of a major party and the first woman to seek the Democratic Party’s nomination. The exhibit shares how Congresswoman Chisholm stepped up, claimed her seat at the table of public discourse, and made a difference by representing a wide range of people and issues.
This exhibit features chairs created by community groups and individuals during Institute-hosted workshops at schools, community organizations, libraries, and social justice offices. The chair-makers creatively show their thoughts on identity, values, and the social issues that need to be addressed at inclusive tables of power. The exhibit features audio recordings of the chair-makers’ visions about their art, and a feedback area where visitors can contribute their own thoughts about representation and access to spaces of power.
Arctic Adventure: Exploring with Technology
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 1 Science Park Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.mos.org/exhibits/arctic-adventure
As you enter Arctic Adventure from the Blue Wing, you’re not simply told about the Arctic—you’ll feel it. The region comes to life in front of you, with digitally immersive sights and sounds including a touchable wall of real ice. The exhibit’s engaging experiences invite you to be an active participant. Become an Arctic researcher as you use technology (including ground-penetrating radar and ice core drills) to explore our changing environment. The exhibition itself changes, too. Lighting hues mimic the Sun’s motion over the course of the day. The scenery, and the animals you find in it, vary with the seasons.
This experience also illuminates the many ways our global climate is changing. Learn how 800,000 years of climate history are recorded in the ice, and how animal behaviors are changing as they face unprecedented warming in the Arctic.
Day of the Dead
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA
More Info: https://peabody.harvard.edu/day-dead-exhibit
The Peabody Museum’s exhibition of a Day of the Dead ofrenda or altar is located in the Encounters With the Americas gallery. The exhibit features pieces from the Alice P. Melvin Collection of Mexican Folk Art and represents the Aztec origins of the holiday and the Catholic symbols incorporated into the tradition, from skeletons to plush Jesus figures.
Napoleon Jones-Henderson: I Am As I Am—A Man
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 25 Harbor Shore Drive, Boston MA
More Info: https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/napoleon-jones-henderson-i-am-i-am%E2%80%94-man
For more than 50 years, Napoleon Jones-Henderson (b. 1943, Chicago) has created works that strive to highlight, celebrate, and empower the communities where he lives. Jones-Henderson is a longstanding founding member of the influential artist collective African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (AfriCOBRA). His work translates AfriCOBRA’s aesthetic principles—to create images inspired by the lived experience and cultures of people of the African diaspora in an accessible graphic style with shining Kool-Aid colors—into woven tapestries, mosaic tile works, shrine-like sculptures, and varied works on paper. Often focused on themes of Pan-Africanism and racial justice, Jones-Henderson’s work aims to be self-affirming and reflective, with an eye toward both a fraught past and a liberated future. The artist integrates forms from African ritual sculpture and Southern vernacular architecture and incorporates reverential references to jazzman Duke Ellington’s “Sacred Concerts,” musicians Sun Ra and Stevie Wonder, and writer June Jordan, among others. Made in close collaboration with the artist, this concise survey draws together a suite of Jones-Henderson’s works in various media across a 50-year period, centered around his magisterial woven textiles. Jones-Henderson has been based since 1974 in Roxbury, where he has been an influential community member, educator, and mentor. This is his most comprehensive solo museum exhibition in Boston.
Birds of the World Gallery
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
More Info: https://hmnh.harvard.edu/birds-world-gallery
Boasting over 10,000 species, birds are the most diverse land vertebrates on the planet, surpassing the biological diversity of mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. Thriving in every corner of the globe, from tropical forests to polar ice caps, these beaked and feathered marvels vary tremendously in habit and size, from diminutive bee hummingbirds to towering ten-foot-high elephant birds.
Situated on the balcony encircling the museum’s Great Mammal Hall, this expansive gallery captures the surprising diversity of birds with many hundreds of stunning specimens and represents over 200 different bird families. It also reflects the latest scientific discoveries about the evolution of these modern dinosaurs.
Lights in the Necklace
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: Various
More Info: https://www.emeraldnecklace.org/necklacelights
The Emerald Necklace’s 1,100 acres are home to more than 30 bridges. Connecting neighbors and bridging communities is what the Necklace was designed to do nearly 150 years ago by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who would have turned 200 this year. The Emerald Necklace and their shared green spaces continue to be some of the primary places of community connection amidst the ongoing pandemic.
Lights in the Necklace celebrates the power of their urban parks to bring everyone together, inspire everyone and light the way in challenging times. They hope you enjoy the emerald glow in several iconic Emerald Necklace parks as they light the way through winter into spring.
Immersive Frida Kahlo
Date: April 1 – April 30
Time: Varies
Location: Lighthouse Art Space at the Castle, 130 Columbus Avenue, Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.immersive-frida.com/boston/
Explore the world through the eyes of the legendary Frida Kahlo – a brilliant, uncompromising painter who created some of the history’s most iconic artwork. The groundbreaking team behind the smash hit Immersive Van Gogh now turn their eye for innovation towards the work of a woman who boldly told the story of her life in brushstrokes.
“Read the Room” Book Club
Date: April 6
Time: 6:00 pm
Location:137 Beacon Street, Boston, MA
More Info: https://www.thegibsonhouse.org/events.html
The Gibson House Museum and the Nichols House Museum are pleased to announce the 2021-2022 season of “Read the Room,” our book club inspired by the literary salons of the nineteenth century. We welcome both our familiar friends and those new to the museums to join us for group discussion about the Victorian world and its connections to the contemporary moment. Each month’s book selection will reflect some aspect of the museums. Participants will be provided with a list of discussion questions the week prior to the event, and each event will highlight particular objects or spaces at the host museum that connect to the book. Some programs will take place on site; others will happen virtually, so that we can welcome everyone to an experience that feels comfortable for them.
Space is limited, and advanced registration is required. Registration is free for Nichols House Museum and Gibson House Museum members. For non-members, registration is $12 per meeting or $45 for the entire season.
Casino Night to Benefit BCH
Date: April 7
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: 35 Braintree Hill Office Park Suite 404, Braintree, MA
Join them for an incredible night of fun for a good cause! Dress up for an evening out at their casino night. Casino Games, Silent Auction, Raffle.
Ticket Price is $25 if bought online in advance, $30 at the door.
All proceeds will go to Boston Children’s Hospital.
The Arc of Massachusetts Building Brighter Futures
Date: April 7
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: 70 Third Avenue, Waltham, MA
More Info: https://thearcofmass.org/calendar/building-brighter-futures-gala/
Please join The Arc of Massachusetts in person for a fun evening including live music, cocktail reception, dinner, and auction. The program will feature “What Was It Like?” an unforgettable short film by eight filmmakers with disabilities and a discussion afterward. Or you can choose to take part from home while enjoying an instant cocktail party and viewing the program online.
Virtual Student Guide Tour: Painting’s Punchlines, with Sophia Clark
Date: April 7
Time: 8:00 pm
Location: Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
In this tour, Sophia Clark ’23 explores the varied means and ends of humor in three works of art that, at first glance, may not seem funny. They are Mervin Jules’s 1937 painting The Art Lover; Charles Bird King’s 1830 painting The Vanity of the Artist’s Dream; and the Archaic Greek Eye cup: Athena (c. 530 BCE), which gives drinkers a different face when they tilt the cup toward them.
Saturday Mansion Tour of Gore Place
Date: April 9
Time: 10:30 am – 11:30 am
Location: Gore Place,52 Gore Street, Waltham, MA
More Info: https://goreplace.org/whats-on/mansion-tour-2
Take a tour of the mansion at Gore Place, one of New England’s most fascinating historic houses. Your guide will lead you around the exterior of the house, pointing out interesting architectural features. Then, you’ll go inside to see the elegant rooms on the ground floor. Tour takes approximately 45 minutes. You’ll know why the home of Christopher and Rebecca Gore is known as the finest example of early 18oos architecture in New England.
Virtual Livestream, Director’s Series, Birth: The Early History and Meaning of the Arnold Arboretum
Date: April 11
Time: 7:00 pm
Location: Virtual
More Info: https://arboretum.harvard.edu/events/
Join the Arnold Arboretum’s Director William (Ned) Friedman for the annual Director’s Series! To celebrate the Arboretum’s sesquicentennial, this year’s series will explore the Magic and Meaning of a
Garden of Trees. Over the course of four sessions, we will trace the Arnold’s significance in the landscape architecture movement, value for the people of Boston, and leadership in creating global connections between plants and people. This session will include brief presentations and a moderated panel. The program is free and is offered both in person and livestreamed.
Mythical Creatures Scavenger Hunt Kick-Off
Date: April 15
Time: 11:00 am
Location: 26 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA
More Info: https://hmane.harvard.edu/event/mythical-creatures-scavenger-hunt-kick
Join them to hunt for mythical creatures across the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. Can you find a genie, merfolk, or a centaur? What might have inspired a cyclops or a piranha plant? Travel through the galleries of four museums on your quest for these amazing creatures. Test your skills in the galleries of the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East, and the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.
Cardboard Extravaganza
Date: April 19
Time: 9:30 am
Location: 308 Congress Street, Boston, MA
More Info: https://bostonchildrensmuseum.org/calendar/cardboard-extravaganza-0
Create with cardboard boxes, large and small. Make a castle or maybe an ice cream shop to add to our cardboard world. Put on a costume and let your imagination go wild!
Mexican Red: The Perfect Color that Changed the World
Date: April 20
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: Virtual
More Info: https://peabody.harvard.edu/event/mexican-red-perfect-color-changed-world
Cochineal (Dactylopius coccus) is a small insect that produces a brilliant red pigment. Found in textiles, paintings, cosmetics, and many other objects that span the globe, cochineal is an integral part of world history. First domesticated in Mexico, cochineal pigment was used by Mesoamerican peoples long before the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. After being introduced to Europe, it quickly became a precious commodity and control over its global trade was a source of conflict and competition for over three centuries. In this lecture, Gabriela Soto Laveaga will trace the fascinating history of cochineal production and the many efforts to control its trade.
The Power of Antiquity in the Making of Modern Egypt
Date: April 21
Time: 6:00 pm
Location: Virtual
More Info: https://hmane.harvard.edu/power-antiquity-modern-egypt
Ancient Egypt conjures images of pharaonic temples, tombs, and pyramids, and perhaps, even the familiar illustrations from children’s books and magazines showing kilted workers on the Nile toiling away on their kings’ great monuments. But what is the relationship between these images—along with the deep history they evoke and the processes of discovery that made them visible—and the history of modern Egypt? In this talk, Wendy Doyon will discuss the relationship between state, archaeology, and labor in Mehmed (or Muhammad) Ali’s Egypt—an autonomous khedival, or viceregal, state within the late Ottoman Empire—and explain how the power of the Egyptian state in the nineteenth century was built, in large part, on the creation of modern antiquities land and the organization of Egyptian workers as state assets controlled by Mehmed Ali Pasha and his dynasty-building successors.
‘Built to Win’ Challenge
Date: April 22
Time: 2:00 pm
Location: USS Constitution Museum, Charlestown, MA
More
Info: https://ussconstitutionmuseum.org/events/built-to-win-challenge-2/
George Washington puts you to the test: can your family design and build a winning warship? Our first President authorized the construction of USS Constitution. In that spirit, join us during April School Vacation Week on Friday, April 22 from 2:00-4:00 PM to learn about the Ship’s unique design and construction. You’ll tour the Ship and then complete your own challenge: build a ship from household materials that is both strong and fast, like “Old Ironsides.” We’ll race the ships and declare a victor!
Nature in the City Spring Season Kick-off
Date: April 23
Time: 1:00 pm
Location: 668 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA
Drop in to this free celebration of spring with Mass Audubon, Cambridge Wildlife Arts, and more.
Make nature-based arts and crafts for all ages including bird feeder building, drawing, animal mask making, and collaging. Cambridge Public School District students can even enter their works of art in the Cambridge City Nature Art Challenge!
Stories Aloud with Countdown to Kindergarten
Date: April 28
Time: 3:00 pm
Location: 308 Congress Street, Boston, MA
More Info: https://bostonchildrensmuseum.org/calendar/stories-aloud-countdown-kindergarten-1
Join their special Stories Aloud with Museum educators and guests from Boston Public School’s Countdown to Kindergarten. Enjoy the story of the day and activities that support young children and their adults in practicing school readiness skills together. Sing songs, move your body, and learn together!
Stop the Stigma 5K
Date: April 30
Time: 9:30 am
Location: 440 East Squantum Street, Quincy, MA
More Info: https://interfaithsocialservices.org/stop-the-stigma-5k/
Nearly every family in the United States has been touched by mental illness or addiction. Interfaith Social Services hosts the Stop the Stigma 5K each year to support our loved ones, challenge stereotypes, encourage acceptance and eliminate stigmas, all while raising funds for our New Directions Counseling Center.
Participate this year by joining them in-person for their traditional race route in the Squantum neighborhood of Quincy, MA, or join virtually by running or walking a 5K of your choice and then posting your time and photos to our virtual 5K platform.