Extracurriculars

From left: Summer Solstice Celebration, at the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture; Winter Sunset, Blair Pond, 2008, by Lois Dodd, at the Bruce Museum; a still from Close-Up, by director Abbas Kiarostami, at the Harvard Film Archive

From left: courtesy of the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture; ©Lois Dodd/courtesy of Alexandre Gallery, New York; courtesy of MK2/Harvard Film Archive

 Nature  |  Lectures  |  Music  |  Dance  |  Film  |  Exhibitions  |  Theater

Nature

Beacon Hill Garden Club
beaconhillgardenclub.org
Hidden Gardens of Beacon Hill offers a look at unique urban sanctuaries. (May 18)

The Trustees
thetrustees.org
Join spring gatherings at Trustees properties in and around Boston, including bird walks at Belle Isle Reservation (May 13 and June 3) and riverboat cruises from the Crane Estate. (May 27)

Garden in the Woods
Enjoy guided or self-steered walks through this 45-acre botanical haven in Framingham, which offers diverse landscapes—and bountiful ideas for native plantings for New England backyards.

Lectures

Harvard Radcliffe Institute
radcliffe.harvard.edu
Speakers address what’s “Next in Food Sustainability and Climate Change” during this afternoon event, online and in person. (May 8) “Tell Me Everything,” a conversation with Afghan writer, activist, educator, and former Radcliffe Fellow Homeira Qaderio (online). (May 17)

Music

Fruitlands Museum
thetrustees.org/event/85132
Contemporary folk-rock musician Melissa Ferrick, Ed.M. ’19, who has created some 17 albums, performs live as part of the site’s spring and summer concert series. (May 11)

Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras
boxoffice.harvard.edu
The BYSO 65th Season Concert, with music director and conductor Federico Cortese. Sanders Theatre. (June 11)

Boston Typewriter Orchestra
bostontypewriterorchestra.com
This unique, impassioned collective takes to the keys, evoking offices of old and banging out rollicking percussive tributes and pastiched works featuring voiceovers and other machines not designed as instruments of sound. The group performs at The Foundry, in West Stockbridge (June 10) and at the deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum. (June 23)

Dance

Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
icaboston.org
The multidisciplinary performer-designer team of Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born presents two theatrical evenings of movement, music, and cinematic art.
(May 12 and 13)

Film

Harvard Film Archive
harvardfilmarchive.org
Late Kiarostami explores the visual poetic powers of Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami through screenings of The Wind Will Carry Us, Taste of Cherry, and Certified Copy, among other works.(May 12-27)

25th Annual Provincetown Film Festival
provincetownfilm.org
More than 80 independent films, from international features and documentaries to animated narratives and award-winning shorts. (June 14-18)

Exhibitions

Harvard Museums ofScience and Culture
hmsc.harvard.edu
Shehuo: Community Fire. Photographer Zhang Xiao offers a bilingual, visual exploration of the traditional spring festival in China, contrasting images of regional variations he found in 2008 with the more commercialized enterprises evident a decade later. Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology. (May 13-14)
The tenth annual Summer Solstice Celebration offers free admission to all of the museums, and an outdoor fete with music, circus performances, food trucks—and more. (June 21)

Houghton Library
library.harvard.edu
Sentence: Prison Writing through the Ages offers works by 50 authors from throughout history and around the world. The books, manuscripts, and artwork on display powerfully reveal how people respond to incarceration, and how prison conditions can reflect society’s broader injustices. (May 8-August 4)

Through sheet music, photographs, and manuscripts, Anna May Wong Abroad looks at the life and times of the first Chinese American movie star, especially her fruitful years performing after 1928 when she moved from Hollywood to Europe. (May 15-August 18)

Bruce Museum
brucemuseum.org
The nearly 80 paintings from the mid-1950s to 2021 in Lois Dodd: Natural Order highlight the artist’s deep renderings of blossoms, verdant landscapes, night skies, elemental architecture, and urban scenes. (Through May 28)

Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum
thealdrich.org
Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home. The Afghan Canadian artist based in New Haven, Connecticut, offers sewn and painted textile works layered with cultural references and the enduring presence of women. (Through June 11)

Cape Ann Museum
capeannmuseum.org
Works by nine photographers in QuarryArt capture the imperial and haunting nature of these man-made spaces of cleaved rock and watery depths throughout the seasons. (June 10-July 30)

Theater

Speakeasy Stage Company
https://speakeasystage.com
The Prom. When a lesbian student is prohibited from bringing her girlfriend to the traditional teen event, Broadway actors travel to her Indiana town to help out.
(May 5-June 3)

Lyric Stage Company
https://speakeasystage.com
Rooted. Two young sisters in a small town, one of whom tends plants in a treehouse, accidentally create a botanical-loving cult. (June 2-25)