All events on Friday October 17
Previous day|Next day- Music: Rock/Pop
- The Notwist
- Friday Oct 17 (8pm) @ Logan Square Auditorium
- After nearly five years of silence, everyone's favorite German-bred electro-acoustic outfit makes its way back to America. On this year's The Devil, You + Me,... View details »
- Music
- k.d. lang
- Friday Oct 17 (8pm) @ The Chicago Theatre
- What began as k.d. lang's controversial, if slightly campy, romp through country music's hallowed halls has since seen the singer appropriate every musical genre available... View details »
- Art
- New Catalogue: Sergio Vieira de Mello: Rally Paris-Darfur
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–5:30pm) @ Rhona Hoffman Gallery More times »
- Free
- Artist collaborative New Catalogue often operates like a stock-photo agency or a design company in order to explore fictional imagery and submerged cultural narratives. Its... View details »
- Music: Rock/Pop
- Deerhoof
- Friday Oct 17 (7pm) @ Metro
- Leave it to heady avant-garde rockers Deerhoof to leak sheet music to build hype for an upcoming album. Rather than go with the now-common call... View details »
- Art: Photography
- Tamar Halpern
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–5pm) @ Tony Wight Gallery More times »
- Free
- Should anyone need criteria by which to measure the success of emerging artists, one could investigate whether they had their first couple of solo exhibitions... View details »
- Performing Arts: Dance
- Cie Heddy Maalem
- Friday Oct 17 (7:30pm) @ Museum of Contemporary Art More times »
- First performed in 2004, this adaptation of Rite of Spring is an expressionist dance-poem of modern barbarism. It's "simple" in the sense that the steps... View details »
- Film
- A Secret
- Friday Oct 17 @ Music Box Theatre More times »
- This epic about a 15-year-old boy alienated from his parents in post-WWII France is a Holocaust movie that is not really about the Holocaust. It... View details »
- Art
- Doug Smithenry
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–5:30pm) @ Packer Schopf Gallery More times »
- Free
- In his latest exhibition exploring the phenomenon of Internet identities, painter Doug Smithenry slyly asks "Are you a nobody?" He calls out the empty self-validation... View details »
- Art
- Josh Azzarella
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–6pm) @ Kavi Gupta Gallery More times »
- Free
- Josh Azzarella's photographs and videos smolder with an eerie silence and a sense of emptiness. They are also faintly, unnervingly familiar. Most are manipulations of... View details »
- Art
- Regin Igloria
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–5:30pm) @ Zg Gallery More times »
- Free
- With an eye to nature as a romantic ideal, Regin Igloria explores how we carry the wilderness along with us, both psychologically and as a... View details »
- Art
- Amy Mayfield
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–5pm) @ ThreeWalls More times »
- Free
- With viscous rivers of paint and delicate black lines, Amy Mayfield conjures phantasmagorical realms that are sensuous and chaotic, sinister yet vaguely winsome. In her... View details »
- More Flavor: Festival
- Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival
- Friday Oct 17 (6–10pm) @ Plumbers Hall More times »
- A neighborhood operation founded 19 years ago, the Around the Coyote Festival has grown into a grander-scale platform for emerging artists. Building on last year's... View details »
- Art
- Carrie Schneider: How Not to Fall
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–6pm) @ Monique Meloche More times »
- Free
- The northern landscape is a compelling, mysterious presence in Carrie Schneider's new photographs and films, made mostly in Finland this past year. The artist appears... View details »
The following events are ongoing.
- Performing Arts: Comedy
- Campaign Supernova!
- Friday Oct 17 (8 & 11pm) @ The Second City e.t.c. More times »
- From the director of the recent hit Between Barack and a Hard Place comes another election-season winner, Campaign Supernova!, performed by Second City. Where... View details »
- More Flavor: City Gem
- Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary
- Friday Oct 17 @ Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary More times »
- Free
- If nothing else, taking up birdwatching gives you a convenient excuse to bring terms like "Magnificent Frigatebird" and "Purple Gallinule" into conversation. In this sancturary,... View details »
- Art
- Discarded Paintings by Gifted Amateurs
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–5pm) @ Intuit More times »
- Free
- Whereas most found-art exhibitions make aesthetic objects out of forgotten knick-knacks, the focus of this exhibition is, more literally, fine art that's found. Discarded Paintings... View details »
- More Flavor: City Gem
- Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool
- Friday Oct 17 (7:30am–7:30pm) @ Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool More times »
- Free
- Escape the roaring cars on Lake Shore Drive and the crowds at Lincoln Park Zoo by slipping through the unobtrusive entrance to the Alfred Caldwell... View details »
- More Flavor: Exhibition
- Chic Chicago
- Friday Oct 17 (9:30am–4:30pm) @ Chicago History Museum More times »
- In this glittering costume exhibition, the Chicago History Museum presents a rarely seen collection of haute couture fashions designed for the residents who helped put... View details »
- More Flavor: Exhibition
- Jack Kerouac: On the Road
- Friday Oct 17 (noon–7pm) @ Center for Book & Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago More times »
- Free
- Jack Kerouac's On the Road — the landmark work of the Beat Generation — is a thrilling, chaotic, Benzedrine-soaked whirl of frantic jazz, aimless sex,... View details »
- Art
- Art of Democracy
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–5pm) @ Loyola University Museum of Art More times »
- Whether critiquing economic injustice, spotlighting social issues, satirizing public officials, or inspiring change, 20th-century printmaking has a long and storied history of disseminating ideas to... View details »
- Performing Arts: Comedy/Improv
- Baby Wants Candy
- Friday Oct 17 (10:30pm) @ Apollo Theater More times »
- Whether you love or fear musicals, you can delight in Baby Wants Candy, a fully improvised comedy show with song, dance, and a live band.... View details »
- Film
- The Dark Knight
- Friday Oct 17 @ Navy Pier More times »
- The Dark Knight might go down as Heath Ledger's final film, but it would be a shame if the actor's tragic death overshadowed its prodigious... View details »
- Art: Photography
- Alec Soth
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–6pm) @ Stephen Daiter Gallery More times »
- Free
- In 2002, after finishing his breakthrough series Sleeping by the Mississippi, photographer Alec Soth traveled to Bogotá, Columbia, to adopt a baby girl. During his... View details »
- Art
- Displacement
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–4pm) @ Smart Museum of Art More times »
- Free
- China's Three Gorges Dam has become a dark muse for many artists. One of the largest engineering efforts in history, it embodies China's hunger for... View details »
- Art
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
- Friday Oct 17 (10:30am–5pm) @ The Art Institute of Chicago More times »
- A canonized master of photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson's legacy includes a staggering number of great images, as well as his influential idea of capturing "the decisive... View details »
- Art
- Scavenger Constructs: Site-Specific Sculptures
- Friday Oct 17 (9am–5pm) @ Glass Curtain Gallery at Columbia College Chicago More times »
- Free
- Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans turned mass-produced objects into meaningful art. With this transmutability in mind, Scavenger Constructs features five artists who give new meaning... View details »
- Art: Photography
- Bill O'Donnell
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–6:30pm) @ City Gallery More times »
- Free
- Bill O'Donnell's color photographs offer a world of spooky little vacation homes, troubling the eye with mixed-up scales and half-focused views. This series, on display... View details »
- Art
- Deceptive Design
- Friday Oct 17 (8am–6pm) @ Chicago Cultural Center More times »
- Free
- Can a chair be more than just a place to sit and rest your feet? In a modern-art exhibit, the answer is invariably yes. The... View details »
- Art
- Mark Porter
- Friday Oct 17 @ Northeastern Illinois University Fine Arts Center Gallery More times »
- Free
- Fusing found objects and his own custom-made creations, Mark Porter produces one-of-a-kind pieces that gradually transform themselves — and the gallery — as the show... View details »
- Art: Photography
- Psychodrama
- Friday Oct 17 (noon–6pm) @ Golden More times »
- Free
- In personal memorabilia, frozen grins tend to dominate — smiling is the Pavlovian response to the appearance of a lens. Chicagoan Jill Frank, nodding both... View details »
- Art
- Ian Pedigo
- Friday Oct 17 (noon–5:30pm) @ 65GRAND More times »
- Free
- Although Ian Pedigo makes raw-feeling sculptures out of humble materials — cardboard, plastic, scraps of wood — they reflect a certain sense of precision. His... View details »
- More Flavor: Exhibition
- Artifacts of Childhood: 700 Years of Childrens Books
- Friday Oct 17 (8:15am–5:30pm) @ The Newberry Library More times »
- Free
- The Newberry Library's celebrated collection boasts copies of Shakespeare's first folio and the Popol Vuh, but a new exhibition showcases a lesser-known facet of the... View details »
- Art
- Joe DeNardo and Aaron Henderson
- Friday Oct 17 (1–6pm) @ Normal Projects More times »
- Free
- Normal Projects is a new salon-style apartment gallery that spotlights video and works on paper. The space hosts two-person shows by emerging and established artists,... View details »
- Art
- Francis Alÿs
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–5pm) @ The Renaissance Society More times »
- Free
- Francis Alÿs is a renowned nomad who follows a global circuit of art biennials and museum commissions, but in his work he often returns to... View details »
- Art
- Twisted Into Recognition: Clichés of Jews and Others
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–3pm) @ Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies More times »
- Free
- Hoping to eliminate stereotypes about Jewish people — they all subsist on gefilte fish and bagels with lox, for example — the Spertus Institute has... View details »
- Film: Documentary
- Religulous
- Friday Oct 17 @ Landmark Century Centre Cinema More times »
- In Religulous, veteran comedian and free thinker Bill Maher travels the world, visiting a Holy Land theme park in Florida, London's famous Speaker's Corner, and... View details »
- Art
- Night of the Living Artist
- Friday Oct 17 (noon–5pm) @ Chicago Art Department More times »
- Free
- Turning your artistic influences into zombies is either a Halloween-flavored Oepidal dream or a curiously macabre motion for their immortality. In either case, that's the... View details »
- Film: Festival
- Chicago International Film Festival
- Friday Oct 17 @ Various locations More times »
- Now in its 44th year, the Chicago International Film Festival offers a sneak preview of the most anticipated movies of the fall, along with independent,... View details »
- Performing Arts: Theatre
- Buddy
- Friday Oct 17 (8pm) @ Drury Lane Theatre Water Tower Place More times »
- Mamma Mia! and Movin' Out conquered Broadway even though their books are, respectively, a silly romantic melodrama and a confused narrative told through dance. Their... View details »
- Music: Experimental
- The Residents
- Friday Oct 17 (8pm) @ Lakeshore Theater More times »
- Fans of the bizarre, the occult, and the avant-garde gather tonight as the Residents kick off their first national tour in six years. Dressed to... View details »
- Art
- Rodney Graham
- Friday Oct 17 (10am–5:30pm) @ Donald Young Gallery More times »
- Free
- Rodney Graham's latest exhibition features both a kinetic op-art sculpture modeled after a Black Sabbath stage set and a room full of abstract impasto paintings... View details »
- Performing Arts: Theatre
- Kafka on the Shore
- Friday Oct 17 (7:30pm) @ Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre More times »
- Novelist Haruki Murakami may be our preeminent purveyor of dreamlike narratives, fraught with surrealist tremors, pop-culture curios, and the echoes of history. His recent "metaphysical... View details »
- Art
- Marcel Broodthaers: Décor: A Conquest
- Friday Oct 17 (11am–6pm) @ The Arts Club of Chicago More times »
- Free
- Though it's cited as a seminal example of installation art, Marcel Broodthaers imagined his late work Décor: A Conquest (1975) as both film set and... View details »
- More Flavor: City Gem
- Smart Home
- Friday Oct 17 @ Museum Campus More times »
- Just admit it, you've ogled the sleek modern houses you pass on certain streets and wished you could peek inside. The Museum of Science and... View details »
