MULTIPLE DAYS
Ongoing through April 20 (and Beyond)

PRE-MARATHON FUN

Boston Marathon Fan Fest and Expo
Help manifest good Marathon energy at Fan Fest, with food, live music, workout classes, appearances from pro athletes, and podcast recordings. The Expo, meanwhile, features panels on running with Amby Burfoot, Carrie Tollefson, Mary Ngugi-Cooper, Lisa Weightman, Rob Dalto, and several other notables.
Fan Fest: Free, Friday through Sunday, April 17-19, City Hall Plaza, 1 City Hall Sq., Boston
Expo: Free, Friday through Sunday, April 17-19, Hynes Convention Center, 900 Boylston St., Boston

MUSIC

Boston Symphony Orchestra: Ravel Mother Goose Suite and Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances
Known for having modelish good looks to match their four-handed piano skills, Dutch brothers Lucas and Arthur Jussen double up for Ravel’s fairy-tale-inspired work and a brand-new commission, Andrew Norman’s Split. Rachmaninof’s final composition completes the program.
$53.99-$173.99, Thursday through Saturday, April 16-18, Symphony Hall, 301 Mass. Ave., Boston

MULTIMEDIA

Boston Turkish Music & Film Festival
This two-month fest, which began with a series of film screenings at the Museum of Fine Arts and Goethe-Institut, has shifted to music. Highlights included the violinist and vocalist Bengisu Gökçe (April 18), jazz pianist Süeda Çatakoğlu (May 15), and a wide-ranging concert from tenor Kenan Oktay and friends (May 22).
Free-$25, through May 22, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston and Goethe-Institut, 170 Beacon St., Boston

THEATER

Beauty and the Beast
Debuting on Broadway in 1994, just three years after the classic Disney film, Beauty and the Beast recruited original composer Alan Menken and original screenwriter Linda Woolverton to create a faithful adaptation that ran until 2007. This new U.S. tour takes cues from recent British and Australian revivals.
$62.75-$247.05, Tuesday, April 14 through May 2, Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington St., Boston

Gem of the Ocean
Actors’ Shakespeare Project brings us a new version of the chronologically first play in August Wilson’s American Century Cycle. The year is 1904. In Pittsburgh, a 285-year-old woman named Aunt Ester, sends recent arrival Citizen Barlow on a redemptive journey to a place called the City of Bones while local labor conflicts explode in the background.
$25-$96, Thursday, April 16 through May 17, Hibernian Hall, 184 Dudley St., Roxbury

Mariette in Ecstasy
The Treehouse Collective presents a convent drama based on the eponymous novel by Ron Hansen. Mariette, a young postulate, begins having vivid mystical experiences that her community to the point of crisis, not least of all because her experiences are quite unorthodox.
$45-$50.50, through Sunday, April 19, Plaza Black Box Theater, Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont St., Boston

When Playwrights Kill
Matthew Lombardo’s new, Boston-set backstage comedy stars Tony-winners Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone) and Matt Doyle (Company) in the story of a playwright (Doyle) whose only obstacle to success is the high maintenance actress he’s persuaded to cast (Leavel), who eventually becomes so exasperating that he begins to wonder if murder might be more expedient.
$29-$210.75, through Saturday, April 18, Huntington Theater, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston

Breaking the Code
MIT’s Catalyst Collaborative presents a biographical drama about the British computer science pioneer Alan Turing, who helped defeat the Nazis in World War II with his code-breaking wizardry, only to find himself shunned by the intelligence apparatus after his homosexuality became public knowledge.
$32-$103, through April 26, Central Square Theater, 450 Mass. Ave., Cambridge

MOVIES

My Father’s Shadow
Drawn from the memories of writer-director Akinola Davies, Jr. and his brother Wale, My Father’s Shadow transports its audience back to 1993 in Nigeria, where a father, Folarin, takes his two sons on a trip to Lagos at a moment of great political upheaval, during which a chance for democracy slipped through the country’s fingers.
$13-$15, Thursday through Sunday, April 16-19, Brattle Theater, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge

The Christophers
Steven Soderbergh brings us this dark comedy about a once-great but now-inactive painter (Ian McKellen) whose money-hungry children hire an art conservator (Michaela Coel) to pose as an aspiring assistant and retrieve and complete the unfinished work he’s hoarding. 
$15.99-$18.48, opens Thursday, April 16, AMC Boston Common, 175 Tremont St., Boston

Normal
Bob Odenkirk stars in this modern Western from director Ben Wheatley (Free Fire, High Rise) as Ulysses, the newly arrived sheriff in a small town called Normal. Initially, the place seems to live up to its name, but a bank robbery opens his eyes to a deep and treacherous rabbit hole of secrets. 
$17.49-$19.68, opens Thursday, April 16, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

The Stranger (2025)
French director François Ozon offers a stylish black-and-white adaptation of Albert Camus’ tale of apathy and absurdity in colonial Algiers. Bureaucrat Mersault (Benjamin Voisin) has a relaxed but dull life until his mother’s death (and his apparent indifference toward it) heralds a bizarre chain of events that draws him toward an unenviable fate. 
$15-$19.75, opens Friday, April 17, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Hamlet (2025)
The deep psychological roots of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy have made it endlessly adaptable to different times, places, and groups, as shown yet again by this latest version from Aneil Karia, taking place in London’s present-day South Asian community. Riz Ahmed stars as the all-too-pensive prince.
$15-$19.75, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline 

Exit 8
One man is just trying to get out of a subway station in this psychological horror import from Japan—but, perhaps needless to say, this is no ordinary subway station. There’s only one way out—Exit 8—and along the way he must avoid “anomalies,” which can subtle or frightening, and deal with the other souls who walk these weird corridors.
$15.99-$18.48, opens AMC Boston Common, 175 Tremont St., Boston

You, Me & Tuscany
Halle Bailey, star of Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid, takes female lead opposite Regé-Jean Page (Bridgerton, Black Bag) in this rom-com about a woman whose whimsical quarter life crisis trip to Italy doesn’t turn out quite how she expected—but that isn’t exactly a bad thing.
$13.99-$19.68, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

The Drama
In this Boston-based dark comedy from director Kristoffer Borgli, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson play a couple who are thrilled to be engaged until the bride-to-be confesses to a scandalous act in her past just a week before the wedding, cracking the foundation of trust between them.
$15-$19.75, Coolidge Corner Theater, 290 Harvard St., Brookline

Wicked Queer
One of the world’s oldest LGBTQIA+ film festivals returns with highlights including Louise Weard’s hours-long transgender epic Castration Movie (April 12).
$15-$19.75 (per screening), through Thursday ,April 16, various venues, Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
The diverse settings and anti-gravity fun of the Wii classic Super Mario Galaxy serve as a perfect anchor for the sequel to 2023’s colorful, star-studded The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Benny Safdie, Donald Glover, Issa Rae, Luis Guzmán, and Brie Larson have joined the voice cast for this outing, which finds Mario (Christ Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) fighting Bowser (Jack Black) again—this time in space.
$13.99-$25.98, AMC Boston Common, 175 Tremont St., Boston

Project Hail Mary
Ryan Gosling stars in this adaptation of Andy Weir’s eponymous novel. Like its predecessor, The Martian (also adapted to film), Project Hail Mary tells the story of a lone astronaut, this time tasked with figuring out why the sun appears to be burning out. To get to the bottom of the issue, he’ll have to team up with oddly cute extraterrestrial named Rocky.
$14.50-$19.25, Landmark Kendall Square Cinema, 355 Binney St., Boston

Reminders of Him
Colleen Hoover’s hit romance manifests on the big screen with Maika Monroe (The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Longlegs) as Kenna, back in her hometown after a seven-year incarceration. Barred from interacting with her daughter, she finds solace in a burgeoning relationship with an ex-NFL player named Ledger (Tyriq Withers)—but not without its own complications.
$13.99-$23.68, Alamo Drafthouse, 60 Seaport Blvd., Boston

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TUESDAY (4/14/26)

MUSIC

The Red Pears and Together Pangea
Of these two great SoCal garage bands, Together Pangea has a longer history, forming in 2008, just in time to become a key band in the lo-fi slacker rock era that included acts like Wavves, Ty Segall, and the Black Lips. The Red Pears came on the scene in 2015 and continue to resemble a sludgier, more stoned version of the early Strokes.
$38, 7 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

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WEDNESDAY (4/15/26)

MUSIC

Oh Wonder
English musician Josephine Vander Gucht was about to switch to her fallback plans—becoming a lawyer—when she met future husband Anthony West, leading a fruitful pop collaboration that has successfully kept law school at bay. Their 2015 self-titled debut remains their most popular album; last year, they recorded a new, higher-fidelity version.
$39.50-$87.70, 7:30 p.m., Boch Center Shubert Theater, 265 Tremont St., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Jeffrey Marlow
Star Trek famously declared space to be the final frontier, but the deepest depths of our own oceans are still mostly unexplored—and what little we do know can make it sound like another planet indeed. In his new book The Dark Frontier, Boston University biology professor Jeffrey Marlow gives his reader a thorough rundown.
Free (admission only) or $36.69 (book included), 6 p.m., Harvard Science Center, 1 Oxford St., Cambridge

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THURSDAY (4/16/26)

MUSIC

Lil Mosey
Raised in Seattle, rapper Lil Mosey dropped out of high school and high tailed it to Los Angeles to capitalize on popularity of his 2017 track “Pull Up.” He made the right call, because his biggest hit was yet to come—his criminally catchy party track “Blueberry Faygo” has racked up nearly 1.5 billion Spotify plays to date.
$25, 9 p.m., Big Night Live, 110 Causeway St., Boston

COMEDY

Herman Wrice
A co-host of web series The Kevin Langue Show, Herman Wrice journeyed, much like the Fresh Prince, from West Philadelphia to Los Angeles long ago. These days, he’s one of the proudest representatives of bald manhood this side of Larry David—even if his advice may be hard to hear.
$36.59, 7 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

ART

Xandra Ibarra: Nude Laughing
What does marginalization feel like? For performance artist Xandra Ibarra, it creates a “vexed relation” to living in one’s own skin that she conveys through mad laughter alongside the act of filling a “nylon cocoon” with “white lady accoutrements” including blonde hair, ballet shoes, and pearls, breaking through the formalities of conventional discourse to deliver something stranger and perhaps more affecting.
Free with $30 general admission, 8 p.m., Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

BOOKS + READINGS

Lena Dunham
After the end of her HBO series Girls in 2017, Lena Dunham kept a relatively low profile, preferring to be behind the camera instead of in front of it. With that trademark Dunham candor, Famesick, her first book since 2019, delves into some of the reasons for this shift and a lot else besides.
$61, 7:30 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

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FRIDAY (4/17/26)

MUSIC

Field Medic
Blessed with a classicist songwriting talent and an impressive amount of hair on his head, Kevin Patrick Sullivan calls his sound “freak folk” on his Bandcamp page, but there’s not much of the eccentricity of the original freak folk acts to be found on his latest album, 2025’s Surrender Instead—just a pleasant collection of heartfelt, refreshingly guileless tunes.
$36, 8 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Boston

Starjunk 95
Portrayed as an “intergalactic radio station” with a fictional crew similar to the cartoon members of Gorillaz, EDM project Starjunk 95 is an irresistibly funky manifestation of the Internet’s collective obsession with Japanese pop culture—or perhaps just the point where video game soundtracks no longer require video games.
$25-$35.74, 7 p.m., Royale, 279 Tremont St., Boston

Krooked Kings
A dialed-in alt rock band composed of a bunch of LDS dropouts from Salt Lake City, Krooked Kings mix moody atmospheres with hooky accessibility, maintaining a fluid but reliably identifiable sound with elements of power pop, post-punk, and adult contemporary. They released their fourth album, In Another Life, at the end of March.
$22.50-$32.95, 8 p.m., The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge

TALKS

Don Lemon and D.L. Hughley
The former CNN anchor sits down with one of the Original Kings of Comedy for a wide-ranging discussion. Remembered by many as a TV sitcom dad, Hughley is also a vociferous political commentator whose first book was entitled I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up: How the Audacity of Dopes Is Ruining America. Lemon, meanwhile, made the news himself this year for a high-profile arrest at a Minneapolis ICE protest.
$39-$194.20, 7:30 p.m., Boch Center Shubert Theater, 265 Tremont St., Boston

ALSO

Red Sox vs Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park, 7:15pm

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SATURDAY (4/18/26)

FESTIVALS

Thai Market Songkran Festival
Celebrating the Thai New Year, this fest offers street food like pad kee mao, artisan vendors, live performances including dances and martial arts demos, a Thai costume contest, and a space for the holiday’s signature water fights.
Free, 11 a.m.-7 p.m., Brattle Square, 1 Brattle Sq., Cambridge

MUSIC

Paul Lewis
The great classical pianist fills in for an injured Joyce Yang with works from Debussy, Poulenc, and Mozart, including the Austrian genius’ Sonata in C Major, reputedly a favorite of Einstein. Lewis has recently been working through such deeper Mozart cuts in performances informed by the subsequent composers they influenced.
$56-$84, 8 p.m., Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, 30 Gainsborough St., Boston

Concrete Boys
Founded and led by their most famous member, Lil Yachty, this Atlanta rap collective also includes Draft Day, Camo!, Dc2Trill, Honest, and recent addition Rio Amor. Their new mixtape, It’s Us Vol. 2, is their first statement since the messy exit of former member Karrahbooo—but fans expecting any in-song commentary on that drama will have to keep waiting.
$36, 8 p.m., Paradise Rock Club, 967 Comm. Ave., Boston

The Maine
Emerging from Tempe, Arizona in the late 2000s, The Maine charted a path out of the emo trappings that characterized their debut, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, developing a country-inflected alt rock sound while maintaining their big, anthemic qualities. Joy Next Door, released last Friday, is the 10th album.
$28-$217.57, 6:30 p.m., Citizens House of Blues, 15 Lansdowne St., Boston

COMEDY

Josh Day
“I am a human trying to survive and I tell jokes,” says local comic Josh Day in his to-the-point bio. On stage, he has the appearance of an oddly well-quaffed mountain man and a refined talent for elder millennial snark: “I like to make snow angels,” he says in this 2024 clip. “Is that what you call it when you run someone over in a blizzard?”
$28.52, 8 p.m., Democracy Brewing, 35 Temple Pl., Boston

DANCE

Chavi Bansal’s Vimoksha Dance Company
Choreographer Chavi Bansal fuses Indian and Western tradition in her works, three of which you’ll see here. Touched by Water wrestles with India’s gender gap; Salt Soaked focuses on immigration stories; the untitled third piece takes inspiration from Moksha Patam, the medieval spiritual board game that eventually became Chutes and Ladders.
$47, 8 p.m., Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

OUTDOORS

Pedal The Necklace: Franklin Park to Jamaica Pond
Do you have a bike you’re always telling yourself you should ride more? Here’s your excuse. The three-part Pedal the Necklace group ride takes participants along the Emerald Necklace from Franklin Park to Boston Common. This Saturday is the first leg, with the second and third on May 2 and 9.
|Free, 10 a.m., meets at Seaver Street Bluebike Station, Franklin Park, corner of Seaver St. and Humboldt Ave. Roxbury

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SUNDAY (4/19/26)

FAMILY

Wild Kratts Live 2.0: Activate Creature Power
Just in time for April vacation, brothers Chris and Martin Kratt are bringing a live-action stage version of their beloved PBS Kids show, Wild Kratts, to the Wang Theatre. Expect wacky fun and fascinating facts about the animal kingdom. Little ones will love it—and you might learn something, too. —MATTHEW REED BAKER
$30-$88, 1 p.m. and 5 p.m., Boch Center Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont St, Boston

MUSIC

Lenka
Regattabar is usually a jazz venue, but on Sunday it hosts this Australian singer-songwriter and actor best known for her breezy 2008 pop earworm “The Show.” Her seventh album, Good Days, drops May 29. Its teaser track, “Sunshine Girl,” weds melancholy lyrics to a deceptively pleasant tune that’s every bit as charming as its now 18-year-old cousin.
$41.79, 6:30 p.m., Regattabar, 1 Bennett St., Cambridge

Yagódy
This Ukrainian folk pop quartet’s mission, in the wake of Russia’s ongoing invasion of their homeland, is inevitably political as well as musical. With their Eurovision-style energy, close harmonies, and darkly beautiful melodies, they put on quite the show, as evidenced by this stirring KEXP session, recorded in January.
$38.85, 7:30 p.m., Crystal Ballroom, 55 Davis Sq., Somerville

COMEDY

Rhys Darby: The Legend Returns
First introduced to Americans as Murray, the hapless manager on the 2000s musical comedy series Flight of the Conchords, Rhys Darby landed another high-profile role this decade as the foppish pirate Stede Bonnet on Our Flag Means Death. The New Zealander’s roots, however, are in standup, to which he recently returned after a break of several years.
$37.75-$50.75, 7 p.m., The Wilbur, 246 Tremont St., Boston

Susan Rice
Active since the ’80s, Susan Rice has performed with Paula Poundstone, Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Hicks, and Sam Kinison, but she remained fairly obscure until her fantastic 2024 Don’t Tell Comedy set Funny Old Bag, featuring such classic one liners as “I got bad knees—it was a speed dating accident,” became one of the most channel’s most viral videos.
$39.90, 7 p.m., Laugh Boston, 425 Summer St., Boston

CIRCUS

Cirque Us Annual Benefit Show
Cirque Us pulls out all the stops for their 2026 fundraiser, with two shows featuring two different sets of guests from around the United States: Flying Gravity Circus, Francesca Bonfiglio, Gwynnethe Glickman, Connor Jocktober, Faith Elizabeth, and Maia Castro Santos at 3 p.m. and InFlyte Entertainment, Judy Epstein, Marissa Schaffer, Amelia Mchugh, Mariah Fraker, Jasper Mayone, Ian Kent, and Maya Zuckerman at 6 p.m.
$26.50-$52, 3 p.m. and 6 p.m., Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

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MONDAY (4/20/26)

SPORTS

The Boston Marathon
Boston’s marathon isn’t just any marathon—it’s the world’s oldest, going back 130 years. You can watch the action at several places along the route from Hopkinton to Copley Square. There’s also a livestream at the ticketed Mile 27 at City Hall Plaza, where you can grab a beer and enjoy a post-race party with live music from COUCH.
Free, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m., various locations, Boston area

MUSIC

The Antlers
Named for a Microphones song, this Brooklyn duo—singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Peter Silberman and drummer Michael Learner—saw their biggest reach in the early 2010s. Their third album, 2009’s alternately noisy and dreamy Hospice, is still their most popular; they recently released a live version.
$36, 7 p.m., Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston

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Ongoing

SHOPPING

Somerville Winter Farmers Market
With many outdoor farmers markets in hibernation, this weekly indoor market, with more than 65 vendors offering produce, dairy, meat, pastries, coffee, specialty items, and more, is an excellent cold weather alternative.
Free, Saturdays through April 11, Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Ave., Somerville

ATTRACTIONS

Dino Safari
Dinosaur-obsessed kids will flip for this walk-through exhibit featuring more than 50 life-sized, scientifically accurate animatronic creatures of the distant past, from the sleek hunter Velociraptor to the perennial crowd favorite, Tyrannosaurus rex. They’ll also find a simulated fossil dig, a scavenger hunt, virtual reality elements, and more edutaining fun.
$20.50-$26.50, open Wednesday through Sunday, CambridgeSide, 119 First St., Cambridge

SlooMoo MiniMoo
If you’re looking for something unique for the kids on a weekend or vacation day, consider this tactile workshop, where they can make and customize their own “slime” with scents, textures, color, and charms, play games with the stuff, and enjoy other fun sensory experiences. See more here.
$23.99, open daily, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, South Market Bldg., Unit 43-44, Boston

Activate
Billed as “the world’s first active gaming facility,” Activate drops you and your friends in a real-life video game, employing interactive technology to usher players through a varied series of physical and mental challenges.
$24.99-$39.99, open daily, 20 District Ave., Dorchester

Putt Across America
If you’ve ever visited Faneuil Hall Marketplace and thought, “What this place needs is a mini golf course,” your prayers have been answered. Familiar American landmarks dot the 18 holes, making for plenty of fun photo ops.
$25, open daily, 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Faneuil Hall Marketplace, 4 S Market St., Boston

Museum of Ice Cream
Yes, you can eat as much ice cream as you want at the Museum of Ice Cream, but there’s a lot more to this escapist wonderland, billed as “a place free from distractions, expectations, and inhibitions.” There are several colorful, slightly surreal spaces to explore at your leisure, including the Diner, Creamliner (an imaginary airplane interior), Hall of Freezers, Carnival, and Sprinkle Pool.
$25-$51, 121 Seaport Blvd., Boston

Museum of Illusions
Experience the delights of confusing your brain at this new downtown attraction, featuring a set of images, installations, and “illusion rooms” designed to make reality feel a little less normal—and to provide some fun and crazy photo ops for the Gram.
$38, 200 State St., Boston

View Boston
If you’ve got visitors and you want to give them a killer 360-degree view of the city, or if you just want a peep yourself, you can hardly do better than View Boston, at the top of the Prudential Center. You can spring for a guided tour or just take it in yourself. The view isn’t all you’ll find up there—there’s also a restaurant, The Beacon, and Stratus, a cocktail bar, which is decked out for the holidays. Higher-level ticket packages include a sample drink.
$29.99-59.99, open daily, 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Prudential Center, 800 Boylston St., Boston

The Innovation Trail
This tour focuses not on colonial and revolutionary Boston—that’s been thoroughly covered—but on the city’s history, down to the present, as a hub of science, medicine, and technology. You can arrange for a private tour via an online form or opt for a self-guided experience whenever you want.
Free (self-guided), starts in Central Square, Cambridge or Downtown Crossing, Boston

WNDR Museum
This gallery space in Downtown Crossing features iconic Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s Let’s Survive Forever and more than 20 other immersive installations, including The Wisdom Project, where visitors can add their own response to the question “What do you know for sure?,” and WNDR’s signature Light Floor, which changes in response to visitors’ movement.
$32-$38, 500 Washington St., Boston

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ART + EXHIBITIONS (Ongoing)

Derrick Adams: View Master
Dedicated to a celebration of, in his words, “Black people — not entertaining, just being, living,” NYC artist Derrick Adams utilizes a wide range of media to make theeveryday iconic. View Master is the first exhibition to provide a mid-career survey of his bold, idiosyncratic, character-rich work.
$20, Thursday, April 16 through September 7, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Attaché: An ASB Group Show
The Boston Center for the Arts casts a spotlight on 30 of its Artist Studio Building occupants. With so many artists in various media, commonalities can be difficult to find, but curator Meclina Gomes notes how their practices “are shaped by inherited culture, migration, and lived lineage” and how their work functions in “carrying memory, tradition, and embodied knowledge from one context into another.”
Free, through July 11, Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts, 551 Tremont St., Boston

Performing Conditions: Artistic Labor and Dependency as Form
Most artists don’t want to have to think too much about business—it’s usually not particularly inspiring—but it can’t be avoided. The artists in this group show are all facing the demons of labor, debt, and the general dependence of art on factors outside it—historical, social, economic, etc.
Free, through August 2, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 20 Ames St., Bldg. E15-109, Cambridge

Subvert, Repair, Reclaim: Contemporary Artists Take Back the Nude
From ancient Greco-Roman sculpture to Picasso’s radical Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, nudes have been a constant presence in Western art, very often fraught, especially when it comes to female nudes, with questions of power and objectification. This show brings together 12 contemporary artists wrestling with these questions as they carry on and complicate the grand tradition.
$30, through August 2, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Fazendo a América: Rosângela Rennó and Histories of Memory and Migration in Brazil
It’s been almost three decades since Brazilian artist Rosângela Rennó has seen a solo exhibition in the United States. These six relatively recent immersive installations, made from personal, public, and anonymous photographs, address the ways collective memory is constructed and erased by the powerful, and the power of art to reassert what some have tried to make us forget.
$30, through August 2, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Unbraid: Hair, Clay, and Craft
Three artists, Adebunmi Gbadebo, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, and Sonya Clark, explore the meaning of hair in their respective personal cultural histories, the first two through ceramics and the third through lithography. A notion of hair emerges as a foundational human artistic medium—“the fiber that we grow,” as Clark puts it.
$30, through July 26, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Framing Nature: Gardens and Imagination
A well-maintained garden is a pretty thing, but also, as a celebration of natural beauty that is decidedly unnatural, a paradoxical thing. This spring, the Museum of Fine Arts is reveling in that tension with a themed exhibition exploring the diverse meaning and uses of gardens in art from around the world and across history.
$30, through June 28, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Split | Second
Our experience of time is defined largely by the ways we measure it, from stargazing to ancient sundials to atomic clocks. The MIT Museum explores our relationship with this strangest of phenomena through items from its own collection as well as Jonathon Keats’ piece New England River Time, which measures time by the movement of five local rivers.
$20, through January 4, 2027, MIT Museum, 314 Main St., Building E-28, Cambridge

Freezing Time: Edgerton and the Beauty of the Machine Age
Explore the legacy of 20th century MIT scientist Harold ”Doc” Edgerton, whose photographic techniques, rooted in antiquated technology and updated for the 1930s, revolutionized the study of high-speed movement. Edgerton was as much artist as scientist, impressing with his pictures enough to be included in the Museum of Modern Art’s first-ever photo exhibition.
$20, through October 8, MIT Museum, 314 Main St., Building E-28, Cambridge

Celtic Art Across the Ages
“Celtic” is a slippery term in history, with scholars arguing to various ends about what cultures, past and present, can be meaningfully considered Celtic. Featuring artifacts stretching back to 800 BCE, this exhibition aims not so much to settle the debate as to highlight the creative diversity and achievements in craftsmanship that fall under the term’s umbrella.
Free, through August 2, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

Imagined Nation
The Boston Athenaeum celebrates the United States Semiquincentennial by sharing a few of its holdings from George Washington’s library, including his copies of Common Sense and other pamphlets reflecting his engagement with the political discourses of his time. The exhibit also features other fascinating historical documents; it will be rotated with new content later this year.
$11, through November 14, Boston Athenaeum, 10½ Beacon St., Boston

Discovering King Tut’s Tomb
Archaeologist Howard Carter’s 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb was a boon to Egyptology that continues to fire the popular imagination. In this interactive show, you’ll relive the iconic moment through virtual reality, learn about the art of mummification, and check out meticulously handcrafted replicas of artifacts associated with the Boy King.
$34.50-$37.50, The Saunders Castle at Park Plaza, 130 Columbus Ave., Boston

Kelly Taylor Mitchell: mouth wide open
mouth wide open takes inspiration from Kelly Taylor Mitchell’s trips to the Bahia region of Brazil, where much of the population is descended from enslaved people who freed themselves. The works here are in conversation with the syncretic spiritual practices, rituals, and objects of this population, but “their true activation,” visitors are told, “only occurs in private.”
$30, through April 26, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Persona: Photography and the Re-Imagined Self
The Gardner Museum explores the power of photography to help us imagine ourselves in new ways, gathering more than 80 works in which artists play with time, gender, mythology, and reflection, addressing broader social concerns and questions of reality itself through the individual act of transformation.
$22, through May 10, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston

The Road to Revolution: Massachusetts and the Independence Movement
Every student of American history learns that Boston was home to some of the most radical activity in the American Revolution, but it was also home to some its most vociferous debate. This exhibition takes a closer look with artifacts including an original broadside print of the Declaration of Independence, battlefield remnants, letters, and personal possessions.
$15, through January 3, 2027, Old State House, 206 Washington St., Boston

Say It Loud: AAMARP, 1977 to Now
Since 1977, Northeastern University’s African American Master Artists-in-Residence Program has provided space and support for Black artists and served as a crucial hub for the wider artistic community. This show features 60 works made or made or shown by nearly 40 different artists during their stints in the program.
$20, through August 2, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Music America: Iconic Objects from America’s Music History
The title says it all: you’ll see 100 artifacts containing the story of American music, from anonymous objects like a Civil War bugle to celebrity possessions like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar and Chuck D’s lyric sheet for “Fight the Power.” Note: apart from exhibit hours, there are three other ways to see the exhibition, each with different pricing—check the link for full details.
$17.40 (exhibit hours admission), through July 7, Boch Center Wang Theater, 270 Tremont St., Boston

Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone
Of mixed Black and indigenous heritage, master 19th century marble sculptor Edmonia Lewis broke multiple barriers, winning the respect of her American artist peers but remaining underexamined until the end of the 20th century, when renewed scholarly interest and the rediscovery of some of her lost works prompted a long-overdue canonization. This major exhibition gathers 115 of her works.
$25, through June 7, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Davis Museum Modern and Contemporary Galleries
Closed for many years, the Modern and Contemporary Galleries at Wellesley’s art museum are back and fully reinstalled with works from prominent figures like Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Daniela Rivera, Horace Pippin, and others, including some pieces from the Davis’ collection that have never been displayed.
Free, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley

Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal
The Museum of Fine Arts casts a spotlight on the popular art of 19th century Hindu devotional lithographs. While they’re sometimes derided as kitsch, much like their Catholic counterparts in the West, the cultural influence of these mass-produced works speaks for itself, showing the power of technological changes to influence religious practice and cultural identity.
$30, through May 31, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Masako Miki: Midnight March
Masako Miki’s boldly colored felt sculptures have both a formal elegance and a whimsical quality. If they seem to have personalities, that’s intentional—they’re partly inspired by yōkai, supernatural entities of Japanese folklore, but Miki intends for them to represent a new mythology all her own.
Free, through May 31, MassArt Art Museum, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston

Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts
Canonical 20th century Irish poet William Butler Yeats is the most famous member of his immediate family, but genius doesn’t happen in a vacuum—the whole Yeats family made art, often working with and influencing one another. Bringing together a wide variety of art and artifacts, this exhibition tells their story.
Free, through May 31, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2101 Comm. Ave., Brighton

Critical Printing
Harvard Art Museums describes this exhibition as “designed to generate experimental thinking.” Paired, like all installations in the institution’s Teaching Gallery, with a Harvard course, it juxtaposes a wildly diverse set of prints from around the world and across history, some abstract, some realistic, showcasing the various techniques and infinite possibilities of the medium.
Free, through May 10, Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge

To My Best Friend
Lasting for nearly the whole of 2026, To My Best Friend celebrates the contributions of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Coté to the Institute of Contemporary Art’s collection, highlighting their focus on women and other historically underrepresented artists. The 50-plus selection includes works from Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Olga de Amaral, Sarah Sze, and many others.
$20, through December 31, Institute of Contemporary Art, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston

Press & Pull: Two Decades at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop
Coming of age during the Harlem Renaissance, printmaker Robert Blackburn helped to continue the movement’s legacy in 1947 by founding his Printmaking Workshop, which held classes and provided working space for artists. This exhibition brings together work from artists associated with the Workshop, a successor of which still operates today.
Free, through May 31, MassArt Art Museum, 621 Huntington Ave., Boston

AI: Mind the Gap
As AI continues to insinuate itself into seemingly every corner of social and economic life, this MIT Museum exhibit becomes more and more relevant. Noting that the technology “often reveals more about human intelligence than machines themselves,” the show draws on the work of experts like Claude Shannon and Seymour Papert to explore AI’s promise and dangers across a variety of applications.
$20, ongoing, MIT Museum, 314 Main St., Building E-28, Cambridge

Reality and Imagination: Rembrandt and the Jews in the Dutch Republic
The Museum of Fine Arts’ Center for Netherlandish Art collaborated with Boston University graduate students on this examination of Rembrandt’s relationship with the Jewish community in Amsterdam. The artist was no alien to this community—he lived in the city’s Jewish Quarter for much of his life.
$30, through December 1, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

One Hundred Stitches, One Hundred Villages: The Beauty of Patchwork from Rural China
In villages across China, a tradition of patchwork, developed from the clothes of monks, carries on unbroken from scarcely remembered times. Used as curtains, clothing, and bedspreads, these eye-bewitching creations are marked by individual improvisation as much as adherence to established technique.
$30, through May 3, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Lighten Up! On Biology and Time
A roster of 15 artists—including Carsten Höller, Adam Haar Horowitz, Seth Riskin, James Carpenter, Liliane Lijn, and Helga Schmid—explore the relationship of life to the cycles of day and night through immersive art, installations, and experiential environments, touching on circadian rhythms, alternative concepts of time, and the mysteries of dreaming.
$20, through August 31, MIT Museum, 314 Main St., Building E-28, Cambridge

Faces in the Crowd: Street Photography
Offering a slice of the immediacy of everyday life and society, street photography has an irresistible power of fascination. Connecting the work of legends like Garry Winogrand with that of contemporary practitioners like Katy Grannan, Faces in the Crowd hops around the globe and through five decades to explore this genre of otherness in the age of the selfie.
$30, through July 13, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston

Knowing Nature: Stories of the Boreal Forest
The Peabody Essex Museum casts a spotlight on one of Earth’s largest biome, which stretches nearly all the way around the world, from Canada through Siberia and into Scandinavia. You’ll learn about the region’s significance and diversity through personal testimonies, commissioned objects, photos and video, and interactive areas.
$25, through September 27, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

Sea Monsters: Wonders of Nature and Imagination
Using historic illustrations, maps, artifacts, and specimens, this exhibition explores the exotic marine beasts cooked up in the dreams of sailors and bards down the centuries, as well as the real-life creatures, like the giant squid, whose scarcely believable existence inspired many of these legends.
$15, through June 26, Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 Oxford St., Cambridge

The Salem Witch Trials 1692
Even when the story of the Salem Witch Trials is told with accuracy, the distance of centuries can make it hard to imagine. With this ongoing exhibition, the Peabody Essex Museum tries to close that gap a bit, bringing the timeline and context of the infamous miscarriage of justice to life through original documents and artifacts.
$25, ongoing, Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., Salem

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Otis House

This grand Federal-style mansion was designed by renowned architect Charles Bulfinch. Built as the first of three homes for former mayor Harrison Gray Otis in 1796, the house is one of the last remaining structures from what used to be Bowdoin Square. Thanks to Boston’s period of urban renewal in the 1960s, the historical home now straddles Beacon Hill and the West End. Inside, its paint colors and carpet designs are historically accurate—and they’re surprisingly vibrant.

Otis House Museum, 141 Cambridge St., historicnewengland.org.

Nichols House

Beacon Hill’s other Bulfinch-built house museum was once home to suffragist and landscape architect Rose Standish Nichols. Among her many accomplishments, she was a founding member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915, which has a mission to unite all women for peace, disarmament, and gender equality.

Nichols inherited the Federal-style home on Mount Vernon Street from her father in the 1930s, and ruled the roost until her death in 1960. She never married, but often hosted salons at the house, gathering intellectuals to discuss and debate progressive ideas over afternoon tea. Nichols intended for the house to be left as a museum after her death, and since then, it’s shown Bostonians what life was like in Beacon Hill at the turn of the century. Tour highlights include furniture handmade by Rose’s sister, Margaret Nichols Shurcliff.

Nichols House Museum, 55 Mount Vernon St., nicholshousemuseum.org.

Gibson House

For a snapshot of life in Victorian Boston, step through the double doors of the Gibson House on Beacon Street. Though you wouldn’t know it from the outside, this brownstone conceals a historical interior that hasn’t been altered since 1954. That’s thanks to Charles Gibson Jr., who in the 1930s decided he should preserve the contents and opulence of his family’s 1860 home. A guided hour tour through the house’s four levels features a one-of-a-kind Victorian ventilator shaft (you have to see it to understand its majesty), “Japanese Leather” wallpaper, a 15-piece bedroom set, and more.

The Gibson House Museum, 137 Beacon St., Boston, thegibsonhouse.org

James Blake House

Built in 1661, the James Blake House is the oldest house in all of Boston. It’s tucked between Upham’s Corner and Columbia Point on a sliver of green space, though it’s about 400 yards from its original location on what is currently Massachusetts Avenue. The home’s original owner, a minister named James Blake, settled in Dorchester in the 1630s. He built the house in the Western English style, now a rare sight in New England. The Dorchester Historical Society only offers tours of the house on the third Sunday of each month, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

James Blake House, 735 Columbia Rd., Dorchester, dorchesterhistoricalsociety.org.

Prescott House

This impressive Federal-style construction dreamed up by architect Asher Benjamin flaunts unique rounded bay fronts and white columns. It was built overlooking the Common in 1808 for a merchant named James Smith Colburn, and on land once owned by portrait painter John Singleton Copley to boot. In 1845, historian William Hickling Prescott moved into the house, and about a century later, it was purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames. The home, also known as the Headquarters House, is now open as a house museum on select Fridays.

William Hickling Prescott House, 55 Beacon St., Boston, nscdama.org.

Shirley-Eustis House

William Shirley, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1756, spent his summers at “Shirley Place,” which he built in 1751. It also served as the summer home of William Eustis, a post-Revolution Massachusetts governor who took office in 1822. Now called the Shirley-Eustis House, the place is one of the last remaining Royal Colonial Governors’ mansions in the country. Tours of the mansion are offered 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, but the grounds, gardens and orchards are free and open to the public dawn until dusk.

Shirley-Eustis House, 33 Shirley St., Roxbury, shirleyeustishouse.org.

Last updated March 2026, with additional research by McKenna Johnson.

This is part of a winter series on things to do indoors in Boston.

On a Sunday that was too wet to go out and too cold to play ball, as Dr. Seuss so eloquently put it, I found myself at a crossroads: Should I spend the day inside the house, becoming a de facto kiddie cruise director, or go out and let someone else do the work? That’s how I wound up at the Natick Mall’s unofficial children’s wing, staring down a gaggle of tables covered in plastic at the Crafts Zone, a DIY spot offering unique projects that can be completed and taken home the same day.

The most exciting offering for my seven-year-old daughter was decoden, the Japanese art of decorating an item with “cream glue” that resembles frosting, then covering it in fun, quirky charms. Essentially, if you love baking, you’ll love making this craft.

After walking into the gray-and-yellow space, we chose our projects from a sample wall: a jewelry box for my daughter and a digital alarm clock for me. Next, we moved to the charm area, which had boxes full of tiny plastic pieces, loosely organized by color and theme. We picked everything from mini cheeseburgers and ice cream cones to Paw Patrol and Hello Kitty characters, along with plenty of stars and bows. After selecting the recommended number of charms, we chose the colors for our cream glue, which was already neatly loaded into piping bags.

Finally seated at our table, a staffer guided us through the design process, demonstrating how to pipe the cream glue (the shell technique took me a couple of tries). Once the “frosting” was down, we arranged our charms. The final, and most fun, step was the sprinkle station, where my daughter chose five different types of non-edible jimmies to give her masterpiece a sweet dusting.

Walking out with our sticky-fingered handiwork, I realized we’d successfully killed a couple of hours without a single screen—and created something that would take up precious space on her bedroom dresser for months to come. Totally worth it.

Natick, crafts.zone.

This is part of a winter series on things to do indoors in Boston.

On a typical winter weeknight, the Dance Complex in Central Square buzzes with a diverse array of classes, from tango to West African dance. Despite the talented crowd it attracts, the affordable classes welcome all levels, which was essential for me, as my moves had become decidedly “dad-like” in middle age.

I chose a bhangra class, the energetic Punjabi folk dance traditionally associated with the harvest and familiar from Bollywood films. Run by the nonprofit Boston Bhangra, the class on this particular evening included three novices and one expert dancer, all of whom were instantly put at ease by instructor Kit Tempest. Before getting started, he offered these words of encouragement: “Don’t be afraid of failure, and don’t be afraid to feel silly!”

Bhangra is based on heart-pounding, nonstop patterns of jumping and hopping to the beat of the music. I managed the footwork fine, but adding the arm movements threw me completely out of sync. Thankfully, a class regular who danced bhangra all four years in college gave me helpful tips to get me back in rhythm.

With the basic steps somewhat established, Kit moved on to actual choreography: the Horse Dance, a sequence where the gestures tell the story of tough young horsemen confronting rivals. Before we finished, the expert dancer gave us one final instruction: “Smile.” Bhangra audiences always want to see a smile. While I won’t be onstage anytime soon, I was smiling the whole time anyway.

Cambridge, dancecomplex.org, bostonbhangra.com. 

This article was first published in the print edition of the December 2025/January 2026 issue as part of a winter activities package with the headline: “The Great Indoors.”

Shopping | Dining | Entertainment

SHOPPING

Utopia Gift Shop

What to buy: Handblown glass ornaments with trees, snowflakes, and gold accents—each one unique, which is more difficult to find than it might seem.

Why Go: The workmanship looks like an heirloom and feels expensive without the price tag to match. Ideal for looking thoughtful at your office Yankee swap. utopiagiftshop.com.

Melsy’s Illustrations

What to buy: Art prints and stationery sets that celebrate fashion, friendship, and a certain optimistic femininity—the kinds of illustrations you want to stick on your desk or frame on your gallery wall.

Why Go: Boston artist Jamel Wakim gets everyday glamour without teetering into precious. And she’s stepping it up a little for this season, with live glittering at the Snowport that makes a gift feel extra-special. melsysillustrations.com.

Starboard and Co. (★NEW for 2025)

What to buy: Handprinted linens featuring lobsters, nautical stripes, and ocean hues—New England maritime heritage without the kitsch.

Why Go: Starboard and Co. knows that coastal charm is most effective when it’s underplayed. Its linens give your holiday table a sense of place without going overboard. starboardandco3.com.

Nivas (★NEW for 2025)

What to buy: Handfelted mobiles, garlands, and ornaments—featuring dinosaurs, ducks, and hot-air balloons—made by female artisans in Nepal using natural materials.

Why Go: They’re fair-trade and sustainable without feeling too crunchy—the kind of newborn gift that looks beautiful in the nursery and lets you feel good about where your money went. nivascollection.com.

Gratinsta

What to buy: Nature-inspired jewelry—petals, wings, and foliage—made from recycled materials such as tiger’s-eye stone and jade accents. Standouts include the “Butterfly Tiger of Eye” necklace and the “Fall Leaf” adjustable ring.

Why Go: Designer Manali Shinde is tuned into quiet beauty, so her pieces feel delicate without being fragile. gratinsta.com.

New York Puzzle Company

What to buy: Puzzles made from responsibly sourced materials featuring images from the New Yorker and Vogue—cultural artifacts that feel as good to display as they do to assemble.

Why Go: Founded in Brooklyn by two friends with a thing for puzzles and nostalgia, these puzzles feel less like a rainy-day backup plan and more like the reason to cancel your evening plans. newyorkpuzzlecompany.com.

Eliana Curated (★NEW for 2025)

What to buy: Statement earrings made from upcycled luxury materials—Chanel buttons, YSL hardware, the sorts of details that usually end up in a landfill.

Why Go: Sustainable fashion doesn’t always look this sleek. Flashy enough to get compliments, eco-conscious enough to mention where they’re from when you do. elianacurated.com.

J.S. Dykes

What to buy: Handsigned, archival pigment prints of Boston icons—the Hood Milk Bottle, the Citgo sign, Acorn Street—in bold geometry and brilliant hues.

Why Go: Fort Point artist John Dykes treats the city like a serious muse, so his paintings feel less like tourist souvenirs and more like art that belongs in your living room. jsdykes.com.

Equals Me

What to buy: Handpoured candles made from toxin-free ingredients and coconut-soy wax—“Golden Hour,” “Into the Woods,” and other scents that make good on their names.

Why Go: They smell as nice as they look, which not all do. An excellent reason to draw yourself a bath this winter and breathe. equalsme.co.

Tuck’s Truffles (★NEW for 2025)

What to buy: Handcrafted truffles in flavors like candied-orange chocolate and raspberry macaron.

Why Go: For high-quality bonbons with global inspiration. Grab two jars: one to give, and one to devour. tuckstruffles.com.

Saltery (★NEW for 2025)

What to buy: Hand-harvested sea salts (made in Duxbury) with infusions of herbs, citrus, and spice—a pantry staple that also actually feels kind of vital.

Why Go: Founder Lily Leedom adds a dash of luxury to something you never knew needed an upgrade. South Shore sensibility meets culinary ambition. saltery.store.

The Snowport Tree Market

What to buy: Holiday trees, wreaths, kissing balls, and a panoply of accessories you’ll need (stands, lights, et cetera).

Why Go: One-stop shopping that doesn’t feel like settling. Choose your tree, load it yourself, or arrange to have it delivered. The ease is the point.

DINING

The Half Cookie

What You’ll Eat: Double-size cookies baked with real butter, Ghirardelli chocolate, and all kinds of add-ins. Fan favorites: sea-salt Nutella, Funfetti, and cookie-butter s’mores.

Why Go: They’re meant to share—half for you, the other half for someone else—but good luck not eating the whole thing. thehalfcookie.com.

Dumpling Daughter

What You’ll Eat: Dumplings, buns, and a sweet-spicy secret soy sauce. Specifically, don’t skip the pork-and-chive dumplings or roasted-pork buns.

Why Go: Nadia Liu Spellman is holding the torch these days for her parents (the legendary restaurateurs behind Sally Ling’s), and she’s doing it with her mom’s dumpling recipe. dumplingdaughter.com.

Lakon Paris Pâtisserie (★NEW for 2025)

What You’ll Eat: Elegant croissants filled with hazelnut cream, cheesecake cream, and strawberry jam, plus those absurdly Instagrammable tiramisu lattes.

Why Go: A smidge of Parisian luxury without the airfare. The aesthetics do not disappoint, and neither do the pastries. lakonparis.com.

The Frenchman’s Crêpes

What You’ll Eat: Handspun crêpes, hot off the griddle, in sweet and savory options.

Why Go: This is one of those times when the simplest pitch really is the best. thefrenchmansgoods.com.

Nagomi Bento (★NEW for 2025)

What You’ll Eat: Fresh, balanced bento boxes with kaarage chicken, pan-seared eggplant, pork katsu, and more.

Why Go: Nagisa Ikemura began making these meals to fuel her training as an athlete in Japan. That discipline shows—good-for-you food that tastes…well, good. nagomibento.com.

Baked Cheese Haus

What You’ll Eat: Swiss raclette—melted cheese, just-scraped from the wheel onto potatoes and bread.

Why Go: This fan favorite proves that a little gooey indulgence goes a long way on a cold Boston day. (Don’t mind the smell!) bakedcheesehaus.com.

Temperance Pizza (★NEW for 2025)

What You’ll Eat: Wood-fired pizza made with fresh ingredients, creative toppings, and a crust that’s perfectly charred.

Why Go: This spot gets it: nothing says holiday warmth like pizza straight from the fire. temperancelive.com.

That Fat Duck (★NEW for 2025)

What You’ll Eat: Poutine—golden, crispy fries fried in duck fat, piled with cheese curds, and generously topped with rich gravy.

Why Go: This Brooklyn-bred chef takes a Canadian favorite and transforms it into Snowport-gold.

ENTERTAINMENT

Mohegan Music Mondays

What You’ll Get: Berklee College of Music artists perform holiday covers and originals each Monday, beginning at 5 p.m.

Why Go: Mondays just got a little more bearable—live music that’s festive but not corny, well executed but not stuffy.

The Crafting Corner

What You’ll Get: A chance to build everything from Lego snow globes to ornaments to hearts with your kids—and for every heart shared across social media with #BuildToGive, Lego donates a set to a child in need.

Why Go: It’ll distract the brick fiends so you have time to make a difference. Win-win parenting.

Snowport Curling Lanes

What You’ll Get: Free iceless curling on Harbor Way, as well as free Learn to Curl tutorials with the North End Curling Club (select Saturdays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.).

Why Go: Feel the zing of curling minus the chill or obligation. Reservations suggested, lessons offered, excuses vanquished.

Winter Wish Wall

What You’ll Get: A 25-foot interactive chalkboard where you can jot down hopes, memories, and wishes for the season, sponsored by Mass General Brigham Health Plan.

Why Go: A moment of reflection after the shopping madness. Sometimes the best thing to give is a little break.

This article was first published in the print edition of the December 2025/January 2026 issue with the headline: “The Snowport Returns.”

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Previously

• Snowport, Your Favorite Holiday Pop-Up Market, Is Back at Boston’s Seaport

I’m standing next to my friend on adjacent towers in a fantasy world, aiming bows and arrows at incoming enemies—dragons, orcs, and soldiers—trying to protect our village from attack. My arms are getting tired from holding up my bow, but we’ve made some progress. We’ve gotten to round six, our team of two racking up nearly 200 points, even as we’re slowly losing ground. Our village is near destruction.

To an outsider, we’re standing in the middle of what looks like a dance floor at Key to Amaze VR in Kenmore Square, strapped into VR headsets with controllers in each hand. But from our perspective, we’re fully immersed in the world of “Elven Assassin”—a sparkling, tropical ocean in front of us, towering palm trees surrounding us, the stone gates of our village at our backs. As we stretch out our arms, notching arrows into bows and releasing the controller’s trigger to shoot down enemies, our virtual selves match us move for move.

Key to Amaze offers dozens of VR options, and during our 40-minute window, we sampled mini golf, a pirate-era cannonball fight, and a zombie apocalypse survival game (unfortunately, we did eventually lose our elven city to the oncoming attackers). The full immersion was disorienting at first—we were completely blind to the real world, seeing only the virtual reality through our goggles. But once we adjusted to the physical movements—ducking, dodging, and moving our arms to shoot guns and swing golf clubs—the adrenaline started pumping and the competitive energy kicked in. It beat playing video games from the couch by a mile. Next time, we’ll be back with a bigger group of friends.

Fenway/Kenmore, keytoamaze.com.

This article was first published in the print edition of the December 2025/January 2026 issue as part of a winter activities package with the headline: “The Great Indoors.”

How do you make the unseen visible? It’s a question Lauren Pizzi has been pondering for a long time. Pizzi was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was four years old. That’s also when she decided she wanted to be an artist. “There’s actually a painting I did when I was diagnosed on the hospital wall in a photo,” she says. “I discovered it the other day and found that to be kind of moving—I’m like, ‘wow, I was making art during that time.’ ”

By age 11, Pizzi was studying oil painting, and in high school, she was wondering how she might capture the experience of chronic illness through art. After earning her BFA at the Savannah College of Art and Design, she took a break from painting to pursue a career in interior design—a field that helped her find a creative path forward. As she returned to painting during the pandemic, Pizzi realized the kinds of patterns she encountered in wallpapers and textiles might help her convey the repetitive nature of a chronic condition. “I decided, what if I made a pattern with the medical alert symbol? It was just this epiphany, and I’ve been running with it ever since.”

The Wellesley-based artist has found muses in her friends, designing patterns evoking their experiences with endometriosis, scoliosis, cancer, and other conditions. After, say, carving vertebrae into linoleum to create a block print or slicing lemons into stamps suggesting the anatomical structure of breast tissue, she finishes the pattern digitally, has it printed on fabric, swathes her subject in it for a photo shoot, and then starts to paint. Despite the circumstances enveloping them, each subject’s individuality shines through. “I get emotional at times painting some of my friends because their journeys have been incredible, and their strength is incredible,” Pizzi says. “Conveying that is very moving, and moving people is ultimately what I want to do with my art.”

laurenpizzi.com.

Walking down Old Colony Avenue after sundown used to be a dicey proposition, but strolling into the brilliantly lit Mei Mei storefront reminded me that those memories of the old Southie have long since passed. I arrived late to the evening’s DIY dumpling class, checked in, grabbed a name tag, and received a plastic container of minced-pork filling. I quickly realized I was the only person flying solo and was directed to a table of six between two married couples—a seating arrangement that surely ruined someone’s symmetrical date night.

After introductions to charming pairs from Southie and Franklin, we surveyed our stations: water, pork mix, and a stack of delicate wrappers. Wine, beer, and cordial cocktails flowed swiftly as our instructor, Agnes—an architectural designer by day, dumpling enthusiast by night—began the tour. She pointed out the small dining area and a large window revealing the industrial kitchen, where we could spot “Hal,” a machine that can crank out up to 10,000 dumplings an hour.

Ready to begin, we learned the first step: priming the wrapper by tracing the heavily floured rim with water-wet fingers. Next came the crucial moment: depositing a “tater tot”–size dollop of pork filling into the center. This naturally sparked a brief, vigorous debate over the precise sizing of a tater tot, but once settled, it was time to fold.

Agnes wisely started us with the easy half-moon—simply folding the round disc in half and sealing the edge. The complexity quickly ramped up, progressing to the bellybutton, triangle, and multiple-pleats methods. While some students expertly executed the intricate folds, my attempts at the advanced styles mostly came out as deformed mutations of my half-moons.

Once our pork supply ran out, we moved to one of the 16 cooking stations and lightly pan-fried our creations, introducing water into the oil to achieve that golden-brown, restaurant-quality finish. Gathered around our misshapen masterpieces with wine in hand, I had to admit: Being the third wheel at dumpling class wasn’t so bad after all.

South Boston, meimeidumplings.com.

This article was first published in the print edition of the December 2025/January 2026 issue as part of a winter activities package with the headline: “The Great Indoors.”