Supply and demanding

Around Town
While others bask in the sun, you’ll be contemplating the dark heart of humanity. The just-opened Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center looks back on the World War II atrocity with a main exhibit of 11,000 artifacts that educate museumgoers on the horrors of genocide. If that weren’t enough of a mission, the visual-art-focused Legacy of Absence Gallery features contemporary art on the Holocaust’s aftermath as well as other modern genocides, including those of Cambodia, Rwanda and the Soviet gulag. 9603 Woods Dr, Skokie; 847-677-4640; hmfi.org; $8, seniors and students $6, kids ages 5–12 $5, kids under 5 free.—Madeline Nusser

Art & Design
Performance art is notoriously a mind-bender: It erodes the boundaries among visual art, music, dance and theater, and it evokes people smearing chocolate on themselves. This summer, the brave Museum of Contemporary Art presents five performance-art pieces by artists including Justin Cooper (who’s been known to cover his head with a hollowed-out pumpkin during performances) as part of its “Here/Not There” exhibition. Even if you miss these events, you can view the “experiences” (and maybe the foodstuffs?) they generate until the Sunday following each performance. Get ready to subvert your conceptions of ephemeral versus permanent art, brainiac. 220 E Chicago Ave; 312-280-2660; mcachicago.org; Tuesdays, 7pm; Jun 30–Aug 2; free.—Lauren Weinberg

Books
Some beach bums you know are flipping through the Twilight series, but you’ve got bigger things on your mind. Save room in your beach tote for Andrew Rice’s new book, The Teeth May Smile But the Heart Does Not Forget. Personalizing the Ugandan civil war that erupted after the overthrow of Idi Amin, Rice follows the son of Eliphaz Laki, a tribal chief murdered in 1972, as he tracks down the truth about his father’s killers. In other words, it’s your kind of lakeside read. Metropolitan Books; $26.—Jonathan Messinger

Film
You can’t call yourself a serious moviegoer (and that is what you are, right?) until you’ve sat through a daylong film. The Siskel offers a chance to test your mettle by giving a rare run to Masaki Kobayashi’s ten-hour epic The Human Condition (pictured), which follows a pacifist labor supervisor’s experiences through World War II. The 1959–61 film’s three parts will screen from May 14 through 28, but if you’re as serious as you say you are, you’ll watch the whole thing in one go on May 24. 164 N State St; 312-846-2600; $27 for all three parts, students $21, members $15, SAIC students and faculty $12; reduced admission available on tickets purchased before May 14.—Ben Kenigsberg

Music
There are far more highfalutin sounds to be heard at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion than an afternoon of Wiggleworms or the occasional Andrew Bird songfest. The city’s Made in Chicago series serves up a primer on primo improvisers with local roots, bringing old-school swingers together with space-time-defying skronkers. Among the most adventurous programs in the six-weeklong Thursday series is a double alto-sax attack pairing jazz educator Bunky Green (pictured, below) and Indo-American blower Rudresh Mahanthappa (August 6). 205 E Randolph St; 312-742-7529; millenniumpark.org; Thursdays, 6:30pm; Jul 30–Sept 4; free.—Areif Sless-Kitain

Theater
In 2007, young composer Joshua Schmidt turned a rarely produced expressionistic play from 1923—Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine—into a thrilling, complicated contemporary musical. This summer, the Milwaukee-based tunesmith tears into George Bernard Shaw’s Candida—another high-minded play nobody would expect to hear burst into song. With the esteemed Austin Pendleton on book duty (he played Motel in the original 1964 Fiddler on the Roof) and a sumptuous production at Writers’ Theatre, A Minister’s Wife promises plenty of esoteric artistry and no jazz hands in sight. 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe; 847-242-6000; writerstheatre.org; May 19–July 19; $40–$65.—Christopher Piatt

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