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