In the Well: Trauma and Healing with Swoon and Dr. Judith Herman

Join artist Caledonia Curry, also known as Swoon, as she presents her Triennial 2025 commission In the Well: The Stories We Tell About Addiction. The event will start with a reading by the artist, followed by a conversation with Dr. Judith Herman that deepens and challenges our perceptions of trauma and addiction, while pointing toward the possibility of healing. This event is free with registration. Register here: https://bpl.libcal.com/event/15050348

Boston Public Library, Central Branch

Public Art and Social Change with Pedro Alonzo and Patrick Martinez

Join Los Angeles-based artist Patrick Martinez for an event discussing the role of art in public space as a tool for advocacy. Martinez will present his work in a lecture, followed by a conversation with Triennial artistic director Pedro Alonzo and GSD design critic Malkit Shoshan, moderated by Charles Waldheim. This event is free with registration. Register here: <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/public-art-and-social-change-tickets-1633104492499?aff=oddtdtcreator">https://www.eventbrite.com/e/public-art-and-social-change-tickets-1633104492499?aff=oddtdtcreator</a>

Piper Auditorium

Cannupa Hanska Luger Artist Talk

Arts on the Point and the Visiting Artist Lecture Series are proud to welcome internationally renowned artist Cannupa Hanska Luger to speak on his artwork Transmutation and his new book SURVIVA as part of the inaugural Boston Public Art Triennial. All are welcome to join us for this free public program. No registration is required.

University of Massachusetts, Boston: University Hall, Recital Hall, Room 1270

New Red Order Presents: The Urge 2 Merge

New Red Order Presents: The Urge 2 Merge is an innovative live event format that weaves between public assembly, academic symposium, music and film festival. Artists, activists, and academics share the line-up with musicians and historical re-enactors in order to present a night of discursive delirium and historical hallucinations on the unruly legacy of Thomas Morton - Plymouth Colony’s most scandalous settler and proto-countercultural visionary. Inspired by New Red Order’s new work Material Monument to Thomas Morton as part of the Boston Public Art Triennial the event will feature contributions from Basel Abbas + Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Peggy Ahwesh, Phil Deloria, Jack Dempsey, Lucky Dragons, Jim Fletcher, CSC (Les Leveque + Greg Fox), Grout, Ed Halter, Nile Harris, Firefly the Hybrid, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Josh Kline, Mary Amanda McNeil, Karthik Pandian, Jean-Luc Pierite, Alex Tatarsky + Shane Riley, Lana Romanova and more!!! The event is open to all ages. Please note that there will be a security checkpoint for IDs, as both alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages will be available. Pizza will be served at 9:00 pm, with additional treats at 10:00 pm. This is an event that you will not want to miss. Registration is free but required. Register now <a href="https://www.thetriennial.org/events/new-red-order-presents-the-urge-2-merge">here</a>. Location: Indoors at 4 Marketplace South in Faneuil Hall, directly across from Wagamama. The space is ADA accessible. Artist Information:  New Red Order is a public secret society that collaborates with informants to create exhibitions, videos, and performances that question and rechannel subjective and material relationships to indigeneity. New Red Order orients their work through the paradoxical conditions of Indigenous experience, and explores the contradictions and missteps that embody desires for indigeneity in the myths, dreams, and political foundations of the so-called Americas. Through modes of entertainment and corporate address, museological display, re-appropriation, and a multiplicity of swerving artistic strategies, NRO aim to collectively advance understandings of how identity is conveyed and configured within contemporary art practices, in order to create sites of acknowledgment that promote solidarity and shift obstructions to Indigenous growth.  New Red Order is facilitated by core contributors Adam Khalil (Ojibway), Zack Khalil (Ojibway), and Jackson Polys (Tlingit). They have presented their work with Art Sonje, Artists Space, Creative Time, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Lincoln Center, Momenta Biennale de l’image, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, New York Film Festival, Sharjah Biennial, Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Biennial 2019, Walker Art Center, and Whitney Biennial 2019, among others, expanding the public secret society network across numerous institutional platforms.

Faneuil Hall

Art on Film: The Camera as a Tool of Intervention

As part of Boston’s inaugural Public Art Triennial The Exchange, the Goethe-Institut Boston presents a special screening program curated by artists Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, featuring selection of films from The Disobedience Archive, a seminal, ongoing video project that explores the evolving relationship between contemporary art and political activism. Initiated by curator Marco Scotini, The Disobedience Archive explores a shared space where artistic practice and civic engagement come together. Rather than drawing boundaries between art and activism, the project highlights a zone of collective struggle and symbolic imagination - a fluid commons shaped through media, affect, and social movement. Urbonas collaborated with Scotini to develop the Disobedience: Boston chapter in 2011, which focused on civil rights movements and acts of disobedience at MIT and Harvard. The archive brings attention to moments where gestures, images, and occupations reshape both political structures and the language of art. In dialogue with the Triennial’s call to “meet art where we are: together, outside, in public,” this screening considers the camera as a tool of intervention, exposing global struggles and reclaiming visibility in contested environments. The selected films by artists such as Hito Steyerl, Park Fiction, Etcètera, Critical Art Ensemble, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, offer more than documentation. They open spaces of action, giving form to ways of seeing and being together in contested environments. A post-screening conversation will invite the audience to reflect, listen, and reimagine art’s civic role within a shifting political landscape. The program welcomes students, cultural workers, and the wider public to imagine how disobedience might appear as a practice of attention, relation, and collective agency - a new aesthetic of the real. Nomeda &amp; Gediminas Urbonas are artists, educators, and co-founder of the Urbonas Studio an interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange amongst diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice in pursuit of projects that transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. Urbonas have exhibited internationally including the São Paulo (twice), Berlin, Moscow (twice), Lyon, Gwangju, Busan, Taipei, Kaunas and Helsinki Biennales, Folkestone Triennial – and Manifesta and Documenta exhibitions – among numerous other international shows, including a solo show at the Venice Biennale, MACBA in Barcelona and National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. Their writing on artistic research as form of intervention into social and political crisis was published in the books Devices for Action (2008) by MACBA Press, Barcelona and Villa Lituania (2008) by Sternberg Press. Urbonas co-edited Public Space? Lost and Found (MIT Press, 2017) that brings together artists, planners, theorists and art historians in an examination of the complex inter-relations between the creation and uses of public space and the roles that public art plays therein.  Gediminas Urbonas is Associate Professor in Visual Arts at MIT‘s Program in Art, Culture, and Technology, and Nomeda Urbonas is research affiliate at MIT. They both are Visiting Professors at VDU - Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, and at NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arte in Milano. Presented in cooperation with Goethe-Institut Boston and Boston Public Art Triennial

Goethe-Institut Boston

Artist Walk: Ghada Amer

Come together for a close look and conversation with internationally renowned multimedia artist Ghada Amer as she gives an artist walk through of the adaptation of her artwork Women’s Qualities (2001) at Lot Lab. Steps from the Charlestown Navy Yard, Lot Lab is transforming an unused lot with site-specific contemporary art installations into a vibrant, free, 24/7 “laboratory” for art + community through October 31, 2023. With three large-scale art installations reflecting a theme of “mending” by international artist Ghada Amer, Boston-area artists Sam Fields and Massiel Grullon, and a youth component led by Kyle Browne, Lot Lab creates an artistically-infused community gathering space along the waterfront that connects Boston to the globe.

Lot Lab

S22: conversations

Wondering what to do in Boston? Places to eat? Free activities? Good for a group? Date night spot? Girls night out? The best things to do? Ask Joyraft!

Best places to go in Boston? Things to do? Places to eat?

Questions & answers about things to do in Boston

Recs 💬

Community recs 💬

S4: top picks

The most fun, cool and unique things to do in Boston. Can’t miss events, shows and experiences. Concerts, restaurants, bars, free things in Boston and beyond.

The most fun and cool events happening around Boston

Hot and new things to do in Boston

Hot & new

Hot & new 🔥

S11: happening this weekend

What to do in Boston this weekend? From festivals, concerts, performances, free events, screenings and more, Joyraft has the best things to do in Boston.

25+ things to do in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville this weekend

Things to do in Boston this weekend

This wknd

This weekend for you

S21: roundups

Our top picks: outdoor dining, free events, spring festivals, best bars, upcoming concerts, museum parties - the latest in and around Boston.  Slug: joyraft-top-picks-best-things-to-do-boston-ma

Top picks of the best things to do in and around Boston

Joyraft picks: Boston’s best things to do

Roundups ⭐️

Curated by Joyraft ⭐️

S28: calendar experiences

This week in Boston

This week in Boston 📆

This week 📆

S20: c+d experiences

Discover new, unique events and experiences happening in and around Boston. Perfect for date night, good for a group or with a friend. Be the first to know.

The newest events happening in and around Boston

The newest events on Joyraft

Just added

Just added to Joyraft

S16: editor picks

The most unique and can’t miss things coming up in Boston / Cambridge / Somerville and beyond. Festivals, food, drinks, fairs, concerts, art and free activities.

Unique and Can’t Miss Things to Do in Boston

Can’t-miss things to do in Boston 🚨

Can't-miss things to do 🚨

S2 (A): top experiences

The most popular things to do on Joyraft. Concerts, restaurants, bars, events, parties, openings, kid friendly, date ideas, free things in Boston and beyond.

Top 20 things to do in Boston

Top 20: Joyraft’s most popular

Top 20

Top 20 on Joyraft

S3 (A): trending experiences

Discover can’t miss events and things to do in Boston. The most fun, unique and cool events coming to the Boston area this spring and summer.

The hottest events happening in Boston

Trending events on Joyraft

Trending 📈

S17: interest based

Your guide to everything free in and around Boston. From events, to fairs, to festivals, to outdoors. Joyraft has all the free events happening near you.

100+ free things to do in Boston and beyond

Free things to do in Boston

Free things to do

S19: interest based

Kid-friendly events in Boston

S18: interest based

Where to eat and drink in Boston? Joyraft has Boston’s newest bars, restaurants and specials. Drinks and pre fixe dinner menus. Cambridge & Somerville too.

Boston Bars and Restaurants: Events and Openings

Food & drink experiences in Boston

Food & drink experiences 

Where

joyraft.host14706