Model home explosions, children dancing in Scottish kilts, men playing baseball on donkeys, murder-suicide aftermaths, linoleum, and America Legion parades. Life in Bloomington, Minnesota, during the 1950s and '60s runs the full gamut of the human experience. For years the Norling family made a hobby of capturing it. Using a police scanner for tip-offs, Irwin Norling, his wife June, and their three kids would often beat the press—and sometimes even the police—to gruesome crime scenes, where they would click away. The Norlings, led by father Irwin, captured the grisly as often as they captured the mundane, and though they would provide pics to police, lawyers, and local papers, their motivation mostly derived from the sheer love of posterity. Their prolific documentation of all things Bloomington was almost forgotten and lost to seldom-glanced-at archives, but fortunately, journalist Brad Zellar happened upon this hidden trove of suburban life in 2002 on a random trip to the Bloomington Historical Society. These smatterings of restaurant openings, head-on bridge collisions, and school dedication ceremonies have been reprinted in Zellar's new book, Suburban World: The Norling Photos, and selected images will be displayed at the Minnesota History Center's Library through mid-June. Opening reception 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 1. — Jessica Armbruster

It's hard to explain the suburbs to someone who has never lived in one. Like an exclusive fraternity, the 'burbs are full of cultural tics that influence our culture, political climate, and society in ways we might not even realize. The Walker's "Worlds Away" explores the split personality of the suburbs; how they can be simultaneously hailed as a utopian realization of family values and the American dream, and criticized for being an intestinal tract, shitting out conformity and homogeneity. In this group show featuring 30 artists and architects, works include colorful photography: a man mowing a dead lawn, a woman proudly standing in front of her McMansion in a silk robe, as well as architectural designs proposing the dawn of a new suburban aesthetic. The Walker After Hours Preview Party promises to be far more fun than a soccer-mom ice-cream social thanks to music by the appropriately named Alpha Consumer, and DJ Glen Leslie, and a screening of Jonathan Kaplan's Over the Edge (1979), a flick about a planned community and the teen hooligans who act out against it. Just don't try to make small talk about your sprinkler system or new SUV. The opening party is $35 from 9 p.m. to midnight on Friday, February 15. — Jessica Armbruster

Eugenics, the practice of changing the composition of a population through sterilization, or discouraging reproduction among people with "undesirable" traits and encouraging it among those with "desirable" traits, is an unsettling concept. But what "Deadly Medicine" shows about eugenics in Nazi Germany is downright terrifying. Organized and circulated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the display demonstrates that eliminating non-Aryans or unwanted members of society from the German population was not and could not have been a solely military or government operation. It took the efforts and compliance of scientists, anthropologists, geneticists, and doctors to plan and execute a path toward eugenics, forced sterilization, and genocide. "Deadly Medicine" shows this tragedy of the rise of eugenics in Germany from before the Nazi regime to its peak through video of survivors, photographs, propaganda, and objects. Throughout the display's run, the Science Museum will host a lecture series with experts discussing the ideas "Deadly Medicine" presents. On April 10, Eva Kor, survivor of Dr. Josef Mengele's harsh experiments on twins at Auschwitz, will speak about her process of forgiveness. — Ben Palosaari

It turns out Lucille Ball's hair wasn't her only red trait. The FBI had a file outlining its suspicion that Ball was a scheming commie. This little-known nugget of America's history of terror and subversion is just one of hundreds displayed in this exhibit from the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., "The Enemy Within." Although the all-encompassing term "war on terror" has gained substantial popularity since 2001, administrations have been battling terroristic groups and individuals since the end of the American Revolution. A few prime examples include the 1919 bombing of Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer's home in response to his anticommunist raids, the explosion of the Munitions Depot in New York Harbor in 1916, and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. In addition to these past terror threats, the exhibit identifies current hate groups functioning inside the U.S. today, and an eight-minute film, Under Siege (no, not the one starring Steven Segal fighting mercenaries on a Navy battleship, although that film would be fitting, too), analyzing current terror threats to America today. As part of the History Lounge series, this Tuesday at 7:00 p.m., author and Minnesota historian Annette Atkins and Minnesota Historical Society Curator Patrick Coleman will discuss how Minnesotans dealt with fear, terror, and government surveillance in the early part of the 20th century. — Ben Palosaari

Somehow, Irish-born painter and printmaker Sean Scully makes alternating shades of black interesting. Somehow, he makes 12-foot-wide prints feel intimate and cozy. And somehow, Scully makes simple patterns feel new and innovative, even though he's been creating them for decades. The 65 prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum—the only collection in an American museum—on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts explore these elements of his vast body of work. Scully's use of lines, stripes, and squares in different areas of his prints gives them a geographic, quilted feel. When Scully places black and white checkerboard next to a different white and red checkerboard pattern, which butts into simple black pinstripes, for example, the work doesn't appear to be disconnected; it's an artistic landscape. As part of the opening weekend, on Sunday Scully will speak about his technique (which includes methods with fun names such as spitebite, sugarlift, and aquatint), as well as his subject matter. On April 17, the 25-minute film The Passenger by Robert Gardner will be screened. The film captures Scully's interaction with his 1997 painting by the same name. — Ben Palosaari