BEST Things To Do In Phoenix
Thursday, June 27, 2019

The Event Oracle knows ALL the fun things to do in the land of the Phoenix sun. Select your date above then scroll down for all the Arts, Entertainment, and Events in my crystal ball...

• Carnival of Illusion

  Arizona Biltmore Resort
  2400 E Missouri Ave
  Phoenix, AZ 85016
  

  Carnival of Illusion is an evening of Old-World Magic in the style of classic entertainers such as Buster Keaton, Mae West, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Harry Houdini. The hosts have performed as house entertainers at the world's top resorts, Fortune 100 CEOs, to the 200 Most Powerful Women in America and operate the longest-running Arizona theater show. Carnival of Illusion is "Magic, Mystery, and OOOH La La."

• The Electric Guitar: Inventing an American Icon

  Musical Instrument Museum (MIM)
  4725 E. Mayo Blvd.
  Phoenix, AZ 85050
  

  The Electric Guitar: Inventing an American Icon, shares the untold story of the invention of the electric guitar, an instrument that revolutionized music and popular culture forever. This exclusive exhibition showcases more than eighty of the rarest electric guitars and amplifiers in the world?from some of the first ever heard to those played by the most famous electric guitarists known today. Decades before rock and roll, these instruments jolted, energized, and even confused the eardrums of the nation. The Electric Guitar: Inventing an American Icon encompasses the history of the electric guitar from the very beginning, including its most experimental period of the 1930s and 1940s, and gives a glimpse into the instrument’s influence on genres that defined American music.

• Grand Procession: Contemporary Plains Indian Dolls from the Charles and Valerie Diker Collection

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Grand Procession celebrates an exceptional collection of dolls, also known as soft sculptures, created by Jamie Okuma (Luiseño and Shoshone-Bannock), Rhonda Holy Bear (Cheyenne River Sioux and Lakota) and three generations of Growing Thunder family members; Joyce Growing Thunder, Juanita Growing Thunder Fogarty and Jessa Rae Growing Thunder (Assiniboine and Sioux). The dolls provide a figurative reference to Indigenous peoples from the Great Plains and Great Basin regions who lived in those areas during the late nineteenth century. Holy Bear, Okuma, and the three Growing Thunder family members embellish each doll with tiny micro-beads in intricate detail. The 23 dolls included in the exhibition represent the largest private collection of its kind.

• A Land North: Works from the Heard Museum Collection

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  This exhibition is a presentation of pieces from the Heard Museum’s permanent holdings of Indigenous Alaskan and Canadian First Nations art. A Land North celebrates the complexities of these cultures and highlights the diverse representation of artworks in the Heard Collection. Featuring more than 100 years of objects, starting at 1900, the exhibition spotlights pieces in mediums including works on paper, textiles, basketry, scrimshaw engraving, jewelry, and sculpture. Many of the works, such as the ivory engravings created by Angokwazhuk (Happy Jack) and baleen basketry by Robert James and Carl Taalak, were produced specifically for tourist consumption, whereas the textiles of Victoria Mamnguqsualuk and the prints of Simon Tookoome were produced as narrative devices.

  Themes explored by the artists include notions of shamanism and the interconnectedness of the metaphysical and the land, illuminating transformation, and spiritual practices. Other works depict daily life and the flora and fauna of Alaska and Canada. Each of these works elucidates the cultural continuum of Indigenous peoples in these territories.

• Around the World: The Heard Museum Collection

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Dwight and Maie Bartlett Heard were world travelers, and they collected art made in the countries they visited. In 1892, Maie Bartlett’s family and her fiancé Dwight Heard traveled to Egypt voyaging up the Nile as far as Aswan with one of Thomas Cook’s tours. The Heards moved to Phoenix from Chicago in 1895 and, while they collected from the Southwest, they continued to collect art from around the world.

  A trip to Hawai’i in 1924 was followed in the winter of 1925 with a second trip to Egypt and the Sudan. In the 1920s as the collections filled their home, named Casa Blanca, they decided to place the collection in a museum to be built on their property. Their vision of a public collection was realized with the opening of the Heard Museum on December 26, 1929. The museum’s upstairs galleries presented cultural arts from Around the World.

  In 2006, more than 75 years after its grand opening, the Heard Museum opened a new exhibition to honor that first exhibition and to share with the public how the collections have grown through the generosity of donors and individual artists who have given work to the museum.

  Around the World: The Heard Museum Collection includes items from the Heards’ world travels as well as important works from later donors like Byron Harvey III. Many of the pieces in this exhibition reveal the global-reach of the Heard as an important nexus for preserving indigenous art and culture. Visitors can view rarely displayed works by indigenous peoples of Canada and Mexico, as well as Guatemala, the Philippine Islands, New Zealand, Zaire and Sudan—From exquisite cradleboards from Plains Indian cultures to Guatemalan paintings and masks from Africa.

• The Third Dimension: Sculptural Stories in Stone and Bronze

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Some of the most exciting and moving American Indian fine art of the 20th and 21st centuries has been created by sculptors. The Heard Museum is fortunate recently to have been given works by leading American Indian sculptors such as Allan Houser and John Hoover Gifts also include sculpture by the next generation of accomplished sculptors inspired by these pioneers, such as Doug Hyde and Bob Haozous, Houser’s son. These will be shown in The Third Dimension: Sculptural Stories in Stone and Bronze.

  The majority of the sculptures come from the estate of Ann B. Ritt, who collected sculpture by Houser (Chiricahua Apache) and Hoover, an Unangan (Aleut) artist. Both artists valued stories, honoring their telling and the inspiration that stories gave to their art.

  Doug Hyde (Nez Perce/Assiniboine/Chippewa) was a student of Houser’s at IAIA, and a major work by Hyde was donated to the Heard by Phoenix Gateway Center. “The Vigil: Mountains, Valleys, Mesas” is a three-part limestone sculpture created in 1988. Commenting on the work, the artist said that it “celebrates Southwest Native people, their hard work and culture that has survived many challenges.”

  Although some of the sculpture was donated in 2011, the Heard was not able to show some of the Hoover and Houser pieces because they needed conservation. The gift of funds from Bank of America’s Art Conservation Project has made it possible to perform this essential conservation work and now to display these three-dimensional stories in all their beauty.

• American Indian Veterans National Memorial

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Service and sacrifice spanning more than three centuries are honored in the first and only known national memorial to American Indian veterans of many conflicts. The Memorial, located outside the Collector’s Room of the Heard Museum Shop, consists of several sizable sculptures by acclaimed Native artists Chiricahua Apache sculptor Allan Houser (1914-1994) and Michael Naranjo (Santa Clara Pueblo). The 10-foot sculpture Unconquered II is the last sculpture created by Houser. Naranjo is a Vietnam War veteran who suffered an injury that rendered him blind. Naranjo has been carving his meant-to-be-touched sculptures by feel ever since.

• Pablita Velarde’s Studio

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  One of the leading painters of the 20th century, Pablita Velarde/Tse Tsan “Golden Dawn” (Santa Clara Pueblo) (1918-2006) was a pioneer as a woman artist in an era and a community where painting was a male art form.

  Her painting began in a traditional manner but evolved through many original styles and media. She engaged in the experimentation that the best artists practice, in media or style. She cared deeply about depicting traditional lifeways that she feared would be lost and using her art to tell the stories of those lifeways. Over the decades she was an effective spokesperson discussing her art and the larger issues of the Native art world.

  This exhibit contains an accurate recreation with original objects of Pablita’s working studio, giving insight to the public of this extraordinary artist’s process.

• It’s Your Turn – Color!

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  This family-friendly gallery offers a fun and educational component to our exhibition Color Riot! How Color Changed Navajo Textiles. Weavers use color, pattern, texture, and their imaginations when they make textiles. At times, the colors are so bright and the patterns are so complicated that our eyes jump when we look at them. Some of these textiles are called Eyedazzlers. Artists working in every medium use these elements of design when they create.

  In this gallery, everyone has a chance to experiment with color and pattern. Try each activity and see which one you like the best!

  Pick a color then follow your color to all of the activities!
  Make a Sheep
  Make a Match
  Weave Away
  Light and Shadow
  Make a Pattern
  Create with Color
  Color a Postcard

• Creative Casting

  Heard Museum
  2301 North Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Copper and tin come together to make bronze, a medium that offers wonderful creativity for artists in the choices of texture and patinas. Sculptor John Hoover, for example, whose earlier work was carved from cedar, found in bronze a medium that could express the qualities of his cedar carvings.

  All of the sculpture in Creative Casting came to the Heard Museum’s permanent collection through important bequests. We are honored that two knowledgeable collectors, Les Goldberg and Ann B. Ritt, chose to remember the Heard in their wills and share their collections with the public.

• The W.O.N.D.E.R. Center

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  An exploration of the original supercomputer – the human brain – The W.O.N.D.E.R. Center is one of our permanent galleries. If you've ever wondered about the brain, here's your chance to examine its anatomy, neuroscience, development, and thought.

  • Examine our touchable brain model. It simulates the size, weight and texture of a real brain!
  • Compare different types of animal brains and see a human brain in the Brain Museum.

• Yayoi Kusama: You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Yayoi Kusama’s You Who Are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies is one of the artist's more whimsical works. Inspired by a Japanese folktale about a person in a field with 10,000 fireflies, Kusama's work brings the fairy tale to life. Beginning with drawings and paintings, Yayoi Kusama’s work transformed from 2-D pieces to large-scale installations, symbolic of the obsessive and massive nature of her ideas. Subsequently, Kusama’s art began to take large forms and often covers and utilizes entire rooms and spaces.

  The piece is a dark room lined with mirrors on every surface and strands of looping LED lighting suspended from the ceiling. This deceptively small room feels as if it’s a vast, infinite galaxy of lighting and allows the viewer to enter and be surrounded, or obliterated by Kusama’s fireflies. 

  Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room explores the psychedelic sensations of the ‘self’ and the artist’s ongoing hallucinations that started when she was a child. In this work, Kusama’s repetitive and extensive use of polka dots, mirrors, and LED lights explores infinite repetition and encourages you to ‘obliterate’ your personality and become one with eternity. 
   
  A pioneer of perceptual experiences, Kusama expresses a complex balance between her psychological obsessions and her aesthetic control over them. In the late 1950s, she left Japan for New York City. Her work spans paintings, performances, installations, sculptures, films, fashion, and literary works. They transcended the Pop and Minimalist movements of the twentieth century and reflect the mind-altering spirituality of hippie culture.

• Evans Family SkyCycle Page

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Suspended nearly 15 feet in the air, the Evans Family SkyCycle teaches riders about the principles of counterbalance and center of gravity, while taking a ride on the 90-foot cable.

• Landmarks

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  
  Welcome! Whether you have traveled from near or far, you likely used a landmark to find your way here. Landmarks can be a part of nature, such as a tree or a mountain, or something human constructed. They define boundaries and may be sites of significant events in our collective or personal histories.
  The works of art in this gallery explore ways artists relate to and represent the land. From sites in national parks to things one might see in a desert or urban environment, the artists gathered here investigate different kinds of landmarks.  
  These features of the landscape help us know where we are in the world and orient us through unfamiliar territory. Over time, they might reorient or reconnect us to a place and reveal changes in the physical world and ourselves. 
  Each of us has connections to places that are important to us. What are the landmarks that define your world?
   

• Early American Modernism: The Decade of the Armory Show

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Early American Modernism: The Decade of the Armory Show features works spanning the first decades of the twentieth century by American artists experimenting with modernism, including Georgia O'Keeffe, Konrad Cramer,  Arthur Bowen Davies, Stuart Davis, Marsden Hartley, Marguerite and William Zorach, Alice Trumbull Mason, and others.

  American art underwent radical changes in the first decades of the twentieth century. The romantic urban realists, popularly known as “The Ashcan School” embodied a major shift in subject matter. More radical were those embracing European modernism who represented a revolution in style, with parallel cultural developments in literature, music, and theatre. The New Woman and the suffragists signaled substantial social shifts as well.

• Get Charged Up

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Humans are naturally curious and the science of observation helps us understand the natural world around us – how things work and why.

  Bed of Nails
  Lie down on a bed of nails. With more than 1,000 nails, each nail supports only a fraction of your weight so the nails won't hurt you.
  
  Giant Lever
  Learn how levers give us a mechanical advantage in this giant game of tug-of-war. It's not about how hard you pull the rope, but where.
  
  Pulley Power
  Go for a ride in one of our three pulley chairs.
  
  Color Mixing
  Experiment with a prism to split white light into its different wavelengths and combine them to form different colors.
  
  Electromagnetic Workbench
  Experience the invisible forces of electromagnetism as objects move before your very eyes.
  
  Electric Circuits
  Build your own circuit and explore the science behind basic electrical components, voltage, current, polarity and Ohm’s Law.

• Philip Curtis and the Landscapes of Arizona

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Landscape remains one of the most popular subjects for artists visiting and residing in Arizona. Philip C. Curtis, while not known as a landscape painter, draws extensively on that subject. Curtis came to the state in 1937 to establish the Phoenix Federal Art Center under the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program. He left two years later to head a similar facility in Des Moines, Iowa, but returned to Arizona in 1947. Settling in Scottsdale, he painted surreal compositions, with figures in Victorian costumes set in the desert. Arizona’s landscapes were a rich source of inspiration for him, and while his canvases do not portray any recognizable geological features, his work may be contextualized within the work of a broad spectrum of artists who came to the state. Curtis saw the desert through a lens of magic realism. This differed from Maxfield Parrish, Eugene Berman, and other artists who preferred more representational modes.

• Flora

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Discover how flowers have inspired fashions through the ages in Flora at Phoenix Art Museum. Showcasing ensembles and accessories by Marc Jacobs, Comme des Garçons, Charles James, Slava Zaitsev, and more, the upcoming exhibition explores the evolution of botanical-inspired designs from the 18th century through the present. Historical garments with embroidered and realistic floral motifs are shown alongside modern pieces featuring flower-inspired silhouettes and bold, abstract floral prints. The exhibition also showcases a variety of textiles and techniques, providing Museum guests with the opportunity to explore and learn about how designers then and now created their flora-inspired fashions.

• Forces of Nature

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Immersion Theater
  What does it feel like to be in the middle of a hurricane, tornado, wildfire, volcanic eruption or monsoon? There's only one way to find out. This five-minute show happens every 15 minutes. Supported by a grant from the Freeport-McMoRan Foundation.
  
  Magic Planet®
  See the last six weeks of weather patterns around the planet. Explore the cloud and air patterns that create major storms around the world. Located in the Wells Fargo Classroom.
  
  Stardust Faces of Science
  Meet three scientists with ties to Arizona: a volcanologist, a hydrologist and a meteorologist. The scientists explain, in their own words, what they do and what their work means to the rest of the world. They also share some of the real-life tools they use in their fields of expertise.

• Agnes Pelton

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Ave. Central Avenue and McDowell Road
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist is the first survey on the obscure American painter in more than 24 years. A graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, she began experimenting with abstraction in the early 1900s in New York, eventually exhibiting in the Armory Show of 1913 at the invitation of Walt Kuhn. She painted conventional desert landscapes to make a living, but it was her abstract studies of earth and light, biomorphic compositions of delicate veils, shimmering stars, and atmospheric horizon lines, that distinguished her work.

   

  A believer in numerology, astrology, and faith healing, Pelton’s abstract compositions propelled her into an esoteric world epitomized by the Transcendental Painting Group (1938-1942), a short-lived group that promoted abstract, non-objective art. Although Pelton received some attention during her lifetime, she has been relatively unknown within the field of American Art. Approximately 40 – 45 works will comprise this exhibition shedding light on Pelton’s artistic contribution to American Modernism.

• My Digital World

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Stop by and explore the world of digital communication technology without hearing the words, "If you break it, you buy it." This gallery introduces visitors to the science behind digital communications, how they work and how they are utilized to create and share ideas and information.
  
  The future is now and we are ready to show you how former science fiction technologies are becoming a part of your everyday life. Explore the gadgets that enable us to share messages, ideas, music and images whenever we want at the touch of a button.
  
  Stop by and learn about these innovations in a very real way that connects you to "Your" Digital World.
  
  Virtual Sand
  Discover how the digital world and physics intermingle with Virtual Sand. Use your whole body to interact with dynamic media to learn and play with digital sand!
  
  Warp Your Image
  Twist and bend your face with Warp Your Image, using pixels to create digital art! Coordinate with buttons to explore just how pixels can alter your world!
  
  Harkins Ham Shack
  When all forms of communications have failed the Harkins Ham Shack is where you'll want to be. Learn how to use the most reliable line of communication with the radio experts at the Ham Shack. Want to learn more about Ham radios?

• Sublime Landscapes

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Spurred by the artists from the North East who comprised the Hudson River School, landscape painting was one of the most popular subjects in nineteenth-century America. Pushed ever westward by expansionist notions of Manifest Destiny, a belief that such territorial expansion was inevitable and pre-ordained. Painters were also part of government initiatives to survey the vast region, particularly in regards to potential railroad routes and to learn about the indigenous populations they encountered. 
   
  Adventurous artists sought landscape subjects beyond the continental United States, some traveling to the Arctic, where they found immense icebergs and the Aurora Borealis (these were dangerous journeys). Artists visited equatorial South America where they thrilled to the sublime vistas and smoldering volcanos they discovered. The Amazon and the Andes were rich sources for exotic paintings. Many regarded South America as “a land of scientific wonders, golden riches, and edenic innocence.” J.P. Reichardt’s Latin American Scene of 1866 captures the attraction of humid locales very different from North America.
   

• Fragments: Broken Bowls Tell More Tales

  Pueblo Grande Museum and Archaeological Park
  4619 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85034
  

  Hear the stories pottery sherds have to tell archaeologists when theses pieces of the past are rediscovered and studied. Fragments: Broken Bowls Tell More Tales, is a temporary exhibit at Pueblo Grande Museum that explores researchers use sherds to uncover a variety of details, such as how the pottery was made, used, and where it was produced. These details aren’t always obvious during examinations of gorgeous whole pottery vessels.

  Visitors typically see the most unique and complete pottery vessels of a museums’ collection on display. They seldom see, or know about, the thousands of broken pottery fragments called ‘sherds’ that are preserved in storage. Using local and traded examples, Fragments invites visitors to see how sherds help archaeologists piece together new ideas about the ancestral O'Odham, more commonly known as the Hohokam.  The exhibition also features sherds that connect the Hohokam with their neighbors across the Southwest and northern Mexico during the time of the European Renaissance. Visitors can listen to local Native perspectives on archaeology and cultural preservation while experiencing traditional O’odham songs that tell of the mountains surrounding Pueblo Grande and their deep connections to past, present, and future O’odham generations.

• All About Me

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Get ready to:

  • Walk through an enormous "working" stomach, complete with the sights, sounds and smells of the digestive process
  • Watch surgeries being performed, featuring the techniques of Dr. Edward B. Diethrich, in the Heart Surgery Theater
  • Test your heart muscles in our Wheelchair Racers
  • Explore the systems of the human body–from defense and immunity to cardio and pulmonary, digestive and skeletal
  • Hear your actual heartbeat as it is translated into sound on a bass drum

  Plus, plan to attend exciting, live science demonstrations in the Daniel Cracchiolo Theater. This stage comes to life daily with scientific demonstrations. From eyeballs to explosions, each demonstration incorporates audience volunteers to roll up their sleeves as they question everything.

• Solarville

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Step off the elevator and board the Solar Light Rail Station to begin your journey. Once in Solarville, you will stroll through scientific labs that study the sun and how to harness and distribute sustainable green energy – from algae, alternative fuels and poop.
  
  Lend a hand in developing wind engine turbines and inventing new garbage waste systems. Also learn about cutting-edge technologies being implemented to address sustainable energy in businesses and cities around the world.
  
  Explore ways you can utilize solar and renewable energy in your everyday life, from home appliances to harnessing the power of the changing seasons.

• Selections from the Schorr Collection

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  
  David and Hannah Lewis have spent four decades carefully and painstakingly amassing one of the most important collections of Old Master and 19th-century paintings in the world, and one of the largest private collections in the United Kingdom. With their first purchase in 1967, the Lewises were not art experts, first beginning their collection for the sole purpose of finding art to hang on the walls of their new home in North London. What would transpire would become a passion that would consume their lives for decades to come, and forever transform the galleries of museums all over the world. 

  Today, the Schorr Collection, named for the family of Hannah Lewis, numbers more than 500 works, ranging from tender 15th-century devotional images through to 19th-century French impressionist landscapes and 20th-century Modern Masters. Rather than sequester the treasures of their collection away in private galleries, the Lewis family shares works from the Schorr Collection, one of the largest private collections in the United Kingdom, with public museums on a long-term basis.

  A recipient of long-term loans from the Schorr Collection in 2013, Phoenix Art Museum will now welcome an additional 30 paintings. This significant group will include a full-length 17-century portrait by Anthony van Dyck from his Genoa period and the great Death of Seneca (c. 1625), by Gerrit van Honthorst.

• Flight Zone

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  An extension of The Kemper and Ethel Marley Gallery, guests experience where the science of flight comes together with Arizona's flight history, providing a unique and engaging experience.

   

  Become an engineer as you imagine, plan, create and improve helicopter and airplane designs. Climb into the fuselage of an actual airplane and venture into the field of aeronautics as you explore the forces and principles of flight through several exciting hands-on exhibits.

   

  • Paper Airplane Launcher
  • Paper Helicopter Lift Activity
  • Pitch-Roll-Yaw Interactives
  • Apache Helicopter Model from Boeing and an Interactive Touch Screen
  • Arizona Flight Caps and Patches
  • Historic Flight Jacket and Flight Images

• Mummies of the World: The Exhibition

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Mummies of the World: The Exhibition features 40 real human and animal mummies and 85 rare artifacts from across the globe. This blockbuster exhibition, arriving in Phoenix straight from Budapest, Hungary, provides a window into the lives of ancient people from every region of the world including Europe, South America and Ancient Egypt, offering unprecedented insights into past cultures and civilizations.
  
  The exhibition will enthrall guests with dramatic displays of the mummies and their personal stories, as well as state-of-the-art multimedia stations that will take guests on a 4,500-year journey to explore the mummies’ history and origins as well as how they were created.

• Oblique Views: Southwest Aerial Landscapes by Charles and Anne Lindbergh and Adriel Heisey

  Chandler Museum
  300 S. Chandler Village Drive
  Chandler, AZ 85226
  

  The exhibit pairs then and now photos of the Southwest to show changes in the land over time. In 2008 Adriel Heisey rephotographed the same vantage points from his plane that Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne captured in 1929.

• Silk and Jade: Chinese Aristocratic Treasures

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  
  Silk was first developed in ancient China. The earliest example of silk has been found in tombs at a Neolithic site and dates back 8,500 years. Legend gives credit for developing silk to a Chinese empress. Silks were originally reserved for the emperors of China for their own use and gifts to others, but spread gradually through trade both geographically and socially to many regions of Asia and the rest of the world. Because of its texture and luster, silk rapidly became a popular luxury fabric in the many areas accessible to Chinese merchants.  In addition to being used to make clothes and other textiles, silk was also used for traditional paintings.
   
  Jade refers to an ornamental mineral, mostly known for its green varieties.   It can refer to either of two different minerals: nephrite, a silicate of calcium and magnesium, or jadeite, a silicate of sodium and aluminium.  Nephrite jade has been mined and worked in China since Neolithic times.  Jade was used to create many utilitarian and ceremonial objects, from indoor decorative items to jade burial suits.  “Anciently superior men found the likeness of all excellent qualities in jade.  Soft, smooth, glossy, it appeared to them like benevolence; fine, compact, and strong, like intelligence; angular but not sharp and cutting, like righteousness; its flaws not concealing its beauty, nor its beauty concealing its flaws, like loyalty.” In these words the sage Confucius captured how the Chinese have felt about jade for thousands of years.
   

• Julio César Morales: Invaders

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Through July 7, 2019, Julio César Morales: Invaders and the 2018 Phoenix Art Museum Artists’ Grants Recipients Exhibition showcase various works by the recipients of the 2018 Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award and the Phoenix Art Museum Artists’ Grants.

  The Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award recognizes a mid-career Arizona artist who has demonstrated a sustained commitment to their chosen medium, continuous artistic growth, and consistent artistic production, while the Artists’ Grants encourage emerging contemporary artists in Arizona.

• Making Sense of your Dollar and Cents

  Arizona Science Center
  600 E. Washington St.
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Presented by JPMorgan Chase & Co., Making Sense of Your Dollars and Cents is designed to introduce children and adults to important components of financial literacy – including budgeting, the importance of savings, managing accounts as well as math – in a fun, playful and engaging manner.

• American Scenes

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  American Scenes/Americas Seen features works spanning the 1930s and 1940s by celebrated muralists and abstract artists including Diego Rivera, Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Carlos Mérida, Alice Trumbull Mason, Doris Rosenthal, and others.

  During the thirties and forties, many artists reacted against the abstract styles favored by the first generation of American moderns, dismissing non-objective art as “un-American.” Favoring representational modes, artists on both sides of the border pursued variations on several period styles variously called in the United States as the American Scene, Regionalism, and Social Realism.

  In Mexico, the Mural Movement shaped by the utopian fervor of the Revolution was initially a state-sponsored project to bring public art to the masses, translating nationalist ideologies into visual form. Some celebrated muralists like Diego Rivera also created easel paintings of idealized peasants marketed to foreign tourists, and Alfredo Ramos Martinez’s heroic paintings of indigenous peoples were in great demand during his sojourn in California in the late thirties.

• Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist is the first exhibition on the little-known American painter in more than 24 years. Born to American parents in Stuttgart, Germany, Agnes Pelton (1881-1961) and her family briefly lived in Basel, Switzerland before returning to the United States in 1888.

  A graduate of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, she began experimenting with abstraction in the early 1900s in New York, eventually exhibiting in the Armory Show of 1913 at the invitation of Walt Kuhn.

• Carlos Amorales: Black Cloud

  Phoenix Art Museum
  1625 N. Central Avenue
  Phoenix, AZ 85004-1685
  

  Inspired by the annual migration of monarch butterflies from Canada to Mexico, Carlos Amorales conceived of Black Cloud as a “plague” of moths that swarm through museum spaces. 25,000 black paper moths and butterflies of 30 different species seem to hover in mid-air, a surreal yet sublime gathering of insects delicately poised in sculptural formations. The artist invented this idea while visiting his grandmother. He has described it as his way of saying goodbye to her—an intensely personal origin for an artwork that inspires a universal sense of wonder in each of us. Nevertheless, the title implies an underlying sense of foreboding. These thousands of uncanny insects envelop us in an experience fluctuating between beauty and awe, the fanciful and the macabre, calm and calamity. Black Cloud exemplifies what art critics have called Amorales’ “gothic sensibility,” while also bringing the raw beauty of untamed nature into the museum.

  Carlos Amorales is one of the most celebrated Mexican artists working today. He was chosen to represent Mexico at the 2017 Venice Biennial, one of the highest international honors for an artist. He works in a wide variety of media, including video, painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance.

• I Have a Name

  Arizona Heritage Center at Papago Park
  1300 N. College Avenue
  Tempe, AZ 85281
  

  “I Have a Name” features a collection of black and white photographs of the people on the street by Jon Linton. Through this dramatic collection, Linton puts names to the faces of the people who live in and around our communities, who have no home to call their own. This exhibition will be accompanied by extensive programming exploring the many facets of the homeless population, from the demographics of the homeless, to their impact on communities, to the service organizations who serve them. Don’t miss this riveting exhibition and programs.

• A Place for All People

  Arizona Heritage Center at Papago Park
  1300 N. College Avenue
  Tempe, AZ 85281
  

  This exhibition explores the African American experience, evoking the power of oration and freedom stories, the brilliance of artistic achievement, and the soaring heights of cultural expression, philosophy, sports, and politics through a series of posters from the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture. The posters serve as the backdrop for displays telling the story of African Americans in Arizona. From the churches and schools to the boardroom; to the battlefields and to the neighborhood barbershops and beauty shops where important news of the day was discussed – the stories weave a rich tapestry of African American heritage.

• Metzilocan: Claudia Peña Salinas

  ASU Art Museum
  51 E. 10th St.,
  Tempe, AZ 85281
  

  “Metzilocan” is an installation-based solo exhibition by artist Claudia Peña Salinas, who lives and works in New York City. The exhibition expands the artist’s research on the Aztec deities of water, Tláloc and Chalchiuhtlicue, relating this ancestral symbolism and knowledge to modernist and contemporary structures. Through travel, documentation and collection, Salinas generates a poetic personal and political narrative. The works in this exhibition address topics ranging from the proliferation of images, the myth and the construction of national identity, to gender issues and the current water crisis in Mexico City.

• Reversal – Lunch Time Theater

  Herberger Theater Center
  222 East Monroe Street
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  In an alternate reality, the norm involves those who have disabilities and those without have to adjust and maybe fight for accessibility. In a comedic vaudevillian style, this play will keep you laughing while demonstrating a different perspective on living a “normal” life.

• Wine Tasting

  Hidden Track Bottle Shop
  111 W Monroe St #120
  Phoenix, AZ 85003
  

  Tastings are always free and provide a great opportunity for locals and visitors alike to taste 4-5 unique, high-quality selections and learn a bit about wine. Free.

• Million Dollar Quartet

  Phoenix Theatre
  1825 N Central Ave
  Phoenix, AZ 85004
  

  Relive the now-legendary 1956 impromptu jam session of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis. Featuring a score of your favorite rock hits including “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Great Balls of Fire,” “Walk the Line,” and “Hound Dog,” Million Dollar Quartet is a scorching show packed with red-hot talent.

• Grand Canyon Centennial Summerfest and Star Party

  Grand Canyon National Park
  S Entrance Rd
  Grand Canyon Village, AZ 86023
  

  During the day, the centennial summerfest will bring together park partners to showcase everything Arizona has to offer.
  
  At night, park visitors can explore the wonders of the night sky at the star party. To kick off its star party, Grand Canyon National Park will celebrate its designation as an International Dark Sky park. Grand Canyon National Park's South Rim visitors can learn about dark skies with the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association and on the North Rim with the Saguaro Astronomy Club of Phoenix. Amateur astronomers from across the country volunteer their expertise and offer free nightly astronomy programs and telescope viewing.