A NASA astronaut shows us the “View From Above,” the Norton opens a blockbuster exhibition, and a prizewinning filmmaker visits the Morikami. Plus, Bill McKibben, Modern English, the Palm Beach Book Festival and more in your week ahead.
TUESDAY
What: Bill McKibben
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
Cost: $35
Contact: 561/757-4762, festivalboca.org
Long before “global warming” even become a buzzword, let alone mutated into the more all-encompassing “climate change,” Bill McKibben has been crunching the numbers and sounding the four-alarm fires. His landmark 1989 book The End of Nature, with its ominous and, in many ways, prophetic title, was the first scientific book on anthropomorphic climate disruption written for a general audience. He’s published a dozen books since then, including 2019’s Falter, which explores the growing artificial intelligence movement, and his latest, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened. Regarding his Festival of the Arts lecture on Tuesday, he tells Boca magazine, “I will describe our new work, starting an organizing drive called Third Act, for people aged 60 and above. We’re determined to show that people of a certain age … can bring their experience, resources, and talents to bear on behalf of the future.”
WEDNESDAY
What: Donald Pettit
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Mizner Park Amphitheater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton
Cost: $35
Contact: 561/757-4762, festivalboca.org
Donald Pettit, an Oregon native selected by NASA in 1996, has been on three space missions and two spacewalks; he first rocketed into the cosmos in 2002 aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor, as a part of a three-man crew, for maintenance and assembly of the International Space Station; he would spend 159 days aboard the ISS. All together, he’s spent about a year in space, occupying his free time by taking majestic photographs of the universe through the windows of the Space Station. Hence the theme of his presentation this Wednesday at Festival of the Arts Boca: “The View From Above.” “I love photography, and I want the photography to be viewed as an art form of Earth,” Pettit tells Boca magazine. “And I like to say that art is an inevitable consequence of being human, even in space.” In addition to the multimedia presentation, visitors can explore an exhibition of his photographs, “Portraits of a Planet,” at 316 Plaza Real, next to Starbucks.
SATURDAY
What: Palm Beach Book Festival
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Where: University Theatre at FAU, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton
Cost: $25 per session
Contact: 561/297-6124, fauevents.com
As we mentioned in our more extensive preview a couple of weeks ago, the Palm Beach Book Festival returns from two years of virtual programming with a blockbuster lineup of in-person speakers. “History & Hollywood” are the two sometimes overlapping themes of this year’s speakers, to wit: Dr. Imani Perry, the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University (10 a.m.); triple-threat actor and memoirist Alan Cumming (11:15 a.m.); journalist Garrett Graff, fresh off his new history of Watergate (1:15 p.m.); and legendary director Oliver Stone (2:30 p.m.).
What: Modern English
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Respectable Street, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach
Cost: $20-$25
Contact: 561/832-9999, sub-culture.org/respectable-street
“I Melt With You,” the signature single from Modern English’s 1982 sophomore LP After the Snow, is such an exuberant earworm that people tend to forget its darker inspiration: It’s about a couple making love during the dropping of an atomic bomb. The album that surrounds the single is a better exemplifier of the band’s blend of moody, muscular, keyboard-enhanced post-punk. In this rare appearance, the U.K. quintet will play After the Snow in its entirety, kicking off its 2022 North American tour.
SUNDAY
What: Opening day of “A Remarkable Gathering: The Fisher Family Collection”
When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Norton Museum of Art, 1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach
Cost: $18 museum admission; free with Brightline ticket
Contact: 561/832-5196, norton.org
This new exhibition of work from an eclectic family collection may be as close to a complete survey of indispensable late 20th century art as you’re likely to find in one space. It’s a veritable who’s who of groundbreakers: modernist icons Picasso, Mondrian and O’Keeffe; Pop art progenitors Warhol, Johns and Indiana; minimalists and conceptual artists de Kooning, Martin and Twombly—and much more. Visitors can experience “A Remarkable Gathering” from Sunday all the way through Sept. 11. These are also the dates to check out “Durer: Rembrandt and Picasso: Three Masters of the Print,” a showcase of 30 works on paper.
Speaker Series: “The Underground Scene in L.A. and Tokyo”
When: 1 p.m.
Where: Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, 4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach
Cost: $5 with paid museum admission
Contact: 561/495-0233, morikami.org
Emmy-winning California filmmaker Akira Bock is still in the infancy of his career, but he’s already cultivated an abiding interest in the Asian-American subcultures in the United States. His skill for unearthing stories of cultural specificity but broad appeal is evident in the three Bock short films that will be screened in this afternoon program at the Morikami. His newest work “Atomic Café: The Noisiest Corner in Town,” completed for PBS in 2021, chronicles the titular restaurant in Los Angeles’ Japan Town, which would become an unlikely haven for touring punk bands in the late 1970s; “Our Man in Tokyo” documents the tireless efforts of a Tokyo-based record store owner to market California Chicano music in his native country; and “Giant Robot” explores an art zine that provided a forum and community for Japanese Americans in L.A. Bock will appear live to introduce the videos and answer questions.
For more of Boca magazine’s arts and entertainment coverage, click here.
