Feminist artist Judy Chicago is primarily known for her 1970s project The Dinner Party. It's composed of an almost 50-foot-long triangular dinner table for 39 guests. Each setting is for an important woman—some are famous, some are not—from history, and features a personalized china plate and placemat for each. The women represented begin with the primordial goddess, then move through the rise of Christianity and civilization up to the 21st century, with the last plate devoted to artist Georgia O'Keefe. The tile beneath the table is engraved with the names of 999 other notable women from history. The installation is permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum, and it would be a major pain in the ass to bring to Minneapolis, but studies of each of the plates and a DVD exploring the entire piece are on display at Flanders Contemporary Art. Opening reception from 6-8 p.m. Thursday, April 24. — Ben Palosaari

When an artist specializes in drawing people in furry suits and designing plushy toys, it's probably pretty easy to veer off into the realm of "too cute." Erin Currie manages to avoid this world of pastel overkill by culling inspiration less from Hello Kitty and more from old (and very dark) folklore tales. "Curster's Fantastico," her first gallery show, features paintings and fiber sculptures of imps, octopuses, and balloons filled with plumes of colors. Just like cruel, old-fashioned fairy tales, some images feel safe, happy, and celebratory while others have a certain wariness and unease to them. Aesthetically, imagine a fantastical dreamscape where The Life Aquatic, Where the Wild Things Are, and Stewie from Family Guy all meet. As a child Currie dabbled in the art of rosemaling, a traditional Norwegian decorative painting style, which combined with her ominously bright and cute subjects creates an odd carnival mix of old world and new. — Jessica Armbruster

Can an artist simultaneously celebrate and critique pop culture? Those familiar with the incredibly varied work of Richard Prince have seen appropriation, pop culture, and cultural criticism battle it out over the span of his 30-year career. His medium of expression varies greatly, from recreating photography, paintings, reprints of comics, and even collecting clay auto-body molds. The duality of his work is evident in his 1980s photographic recreations of the Marlboro advertising campaign, which celebrates the iconic image of the cowboy and Western landscape, while drawing attention to the hypocrisy that such an image would be used to advertise an addictive, unhealthy vice. His Nurses, inspired by the covers of pulp-fiction hospital romance novel covers, are both alluring and unsettling. Also, regardless of where his aesthetic inspiration takes him, each series of work explores concepts of artistic ownership, as he recreates and sometimes simply reprints photography, imitating iconic corporate symbols, or reprinting text or quotes from writers. Prince forces the viewer to reconsider context, drawing attention to the irony of pop culture, while bringing what is normally left unsaid to the forefront. After Hours Preview Party features food, film screenings of Rendezvous and The Honeymoon Killers, a text-based art activity, and music by Skoal Kodiak for $35 from 9 p.m. to midnight Friday, March 21. — Jessica Armbruster

One doesn't need a use Twitter account, an emoticon on a LiveJournal entry, or a link to Google maps to understand that the ways we express and comprehend the meaning of "where" is changing with new technology. This is the general premise of Intermedia Arts ongoing show, "W(e are)Here," a multimedia exhibit that explores the new frontier of "place" physically, technologically, and emotionally. Works include artistic visualizations of hard data, interactive elements, and emotional renderings of location. This Thursday, from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., guests can partake in a "Psychogeographic Mapmaking Party," which, while it sounds like a mouthful, is really more of an adventure. Participants will be sent off in small groups on tours where routes will be dictated by a rolling of dice. Using a wall canvas, Google Earth, a wall projector, and some booze, tour details and memories will then be layered onto one another to create a map of experiences. An art party featuring live music, food and drinks, and a presentation of the final map will be celebrated the next day from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. — Jessica Armbruster

Though August Sander's photography runs the gamut from nature to architecture to street performance, he is easily best known for his portraits, including his epic series, "People of the 20th Century." The extensive project of documenting German society began in the 1920s, growing to over 600 portraits of individuals who hailed mainly from the Cologne region. Subjects spanned the full spectrum, including wealthy politicians, homeless artists, farmers, housewives, children, and others. Sander sought objectivity in his photography, striving "to see things as they are and not as they should or could be." Perhaps this is why his work was banned by the Nazis in the 1930s; his frank and matter-of-fact photography captured a diverse, cosmopolitan, and culturally rich country, which conflicted with the Aryan ideology. Though Sander passed in 1964, his work carries on today with his grandson Gerhard, and his influence can be seen in the work of many later photographers, including Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon. The Weinstein Gallery will feature 23 large-format images from original negatives from his collection. Opening reception 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday, February 22. — Jessica Armbruster

The Arizona/Mexico border is a wild, controversial, and sometimes dangerous place; particularly for a young girl following in the footsteps of her immigrant parents. The two-time Ivey award-winning troupe Off-Leash Area tells her story through movement, ritual, and puppetry, along with a text by Anishinaabe playwright Marcie Rendon. Composer Ben Siems offers an original score that provides the haunting soundtrack for the Sonoran Desert where the heroine discovers her strength in the midst of the national, cultural, political, and personal influences that define the region. The experiences described in "Border Crossing" are the product of a recent research trip that included meetings with small-town Tucson snowbirds, Latino border patrolmen, and Native social workers, among others. — Caroline Palmer

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

Thomasina Petrus manages to combine a world-class set of pipes with a warm, inviting stage presence, so she offers up a complex and appealing portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill. The action takes place in a south Philadelphia bar, where the jazz singer gives one of her final performances before her premature death in 1959. Billie (Petrus) sings some of her greatest, including "God Bless the Child," "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do," and the ever-haunting, impossibly deep "Strange Fruit." Along the way she recounts her life, from humble beginnings performing menial labor, to stardom, and drug addiction. Billie Holiday was one of the greatest singers America ever knew, and Petrus is up to the task of memorializing her while bringing her, briefly, back to life. — Quinton Skinner

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

Trisha Brown is an artist of and for our time, and has been for over 30 years. She began walking on walls and dancing on New York City rooftops in the hectic post-modern era of the 1960s. Since then she has made excursions into opera, visual art, even robotics. Her movement suggests the fluid architecture of, say, a liquefied Weisman museum: flowing in eccentric and unpredictable ways while maintaining a clarity of design that dazzles both the mind and the eye. This week, the Walker Art Center inaugurates "The Year of Trisha" with a show of her drawings that opens with a live performance by Brown in which she synthesizes dance and drawing by improvising movement across a large piece of paper with charcoal and pastel. Next week her company of superbly articulate dancers performs new and classic Brown works at Northrop Auditorium, including the splendid "Foray Forêt" to the eerie strains of a marching band playing from the lobby; "I Love My Robots" with, yes, honest-to-goodness robots (and one live dancer); and "Present Tense," a new work to music by that iconic innovator John Cage. One of the most articulate artists around, Brown will talk about her career in dance and the visual arts at a "Talking Art and Dance" event on April 22. Then she'll be back in July to remount several site-based works from the 1970s, including a work in which the dancers float on rafts in Loring Pond. Kudos to the Walker and Northrop for bringing us so many aspects of Brown, a major 20th-century artist who is still rocking and invigorating the 21st. Opening reception with dance/drawing performance by Brown is free at 7 p.m. (tickets available at 6 p.m. in the Bazinet Lobby) Thursday, April 17; free artist's talk 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 22; dance performance is $25-$42 at 8 p.m. Friday, April 25 at Northrop Auditorium (84 Church St. SE, Minneapolis; call 612.375.7600 for tickets). — Linda Shapiro