Friday 13
Saturday 14
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You can wander through Hyde Park’s Oriental Institute before it closes for renovations and see a private south-side collection of African and African-American art on a Museum of Contemporary Art-sponsored tour today. Marching Through Multicultural Millennia leaves at 9:30 from the MCA’s 237 E. Ontario home. The $45 fee includes lunch at the University of Chicago’s faculty club and bus transportation between locations. Reservations are required. Call 943-8790.
Sunday 15
The new Omnimax movie at the Museum of Science and Industry is a weather bore’s delight. Stormchasers follows a daredevil band of, yes, meteorologists as they get up close and personal with tornadoes, hurricanes, and monsoons. The film shows every 50 minutes from 10 to 3 daily and from 10 to 4:40 on weekends and holidays. Admission is $10, $8 for seniors, and $5.50 for kids, which includes admission to the museum. On Thursdays, when museum admission is free, it’s $6, $5, and $4, respectively. The museum is at 57th and Lake Shore Drive. Call 684-1414.
For 25 years the Chicago Public Art Group has been decorating the city with murals, mosaics, landscape design, and sculpture. You can celebrate the group’s anniversary tonight at a $50-a-head reception at the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State. The fund-raiser also includes a silent auction, a tour of the art in the building, and a slide show of the group’s notable projects. Things get under way at 5:30; call 227-0209 for reservations.
In La Bete, David Hirson’s deceptively postmodern Moliere reconstruction, a beastly, self-absorbed actor named Valere worms his way into the court theater troupe headed by the rigid and principled Elomire (note the anagram). Elomire is appalled, but Valere pleases the reigning prince. The resulting philosophical discussions consider subjects both weighty (artistic purity vs. commerciality; what it means to create art for the government’s pleasure) and light (whether it’s possible for one person to talk until the world ends). It’s all handled in sprightly fashion by copresenters Pegasus Players and Buffalo Theatre Ensemble. The play runs through October 29 at the O’Rourke Performing Arts Center at Truman College, 1145 W. Wilson. Show times are Thursday through Saturday at 8 and Sunday at 2. Tix are $15-$19.50. Call 271-2638.
