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Paul Simon, one of the most celebrated and beloved singer-songwriters of all time, is set to make his Tanglewood debut this summer as part of the festival’s Popular Artist Series. The 16-time GRAMMY® Award winner and two-time Rock & Rock Hall of Fame inductee brings his highly acclaimed “A Quiet Celebration” tour to the Koussevitzky Music Shed on Saturday, June 27, at 7:30 p.m.

Building on true events and characters, the musical tells of the contributions made by a particular class of women in World War I. For vital battlefield communications in France, General Pershing needed personnel with both telephone operator and French language skills. The answer was ultimately over 200 staff members recruited from the U.S. They were all women. They were The Hello Girls.

Admittedly, many in the audience laughed heartily at the antics of the characters. You may also. But if you were expecting sophistication, you will be disappointed.

The Clark Art Institute continues its art in public spaces program in 2026 with a year-long installation presenting the work of artist Sónia Almeida (b. 1978, Lisbon; lives and works in Boston).

Woodie King, Jr., founder of New Federal Theatre and a prolific producer and director who dedicated more than five decades to providing opportunities for minorities and women in the performing arts, died January 29 at Weill Cornell Medical Center of complications from emergency heart surgery. He was 88.

Heartbeat Opera is offering a striking new Manon, cut and shaped into a taut hundred minutes, restoring much of the original wit and allowing it to sharpen—rather than soften—the opera’s tragic ending. This one-act chamber adaptation features a new English translation by Jacob Ashworth and Rory Pelsue. Directed by Pelsue with meticulous attention to detail and an unerring sense of pace. Conducted by the inimitable Dan Schlosberg, the production is terrific from start to finish

Tanglewood—the famed music and learning campus and summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO)—announces details of its 2026 season, opening in late June and continuing to Labor Day weekend.

The Board unanimously elected Esther Bell to the position following an extensive international search. Bell will be the first woman in the Clark’s seventy-year history to serve as its director. She succeeds Olivier Meslay, who announced last September that he would be leaving the Clark and returning to his native France in 2026.

The busybody spirit, constantly attempting to engineer a better outcome or a superior version of one’s being, traps the consciousness in a cycle of tension and insufficiency. This inherent judgment, this constant striving against the current reality, is what consumes our time and energy, diverting us from the deep, undisturbed reservoir of our original nature

Given its experimental nature, Black to Black had quite a run after Edinburgh, in a variety of different spaces and theatres in Paris; and then special invitations to festivals in Switzerland and Lyon. Then, along with One Day in May, it was eventually published in Toronto in a Canadian Playwright series.

Barrington Stage Company announces four titles for the theater’s 2026 season, including two Pulitzer Prize-winning modern classics, one of the greatest theatrical farces ever written, and a world premiere play. More productions, concerts, and cabarets will be announced soon.

First Williamstown Theatre Festival and now MASS MoCA's Fresh Grass have cancelled their 2026 seasons.

Jodi Colella’s rag rugs, lace doilies, and decorative hand towels flaunt quirky sayings lifted from a century’s old word game. Recontextualizing period phrases to capture the language of 21st century culture, Colella reflects today’s coded patterns of speech and cleverly bypasses polite norms.

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In an autobiographical context, Heidi Schreck analyzes aspects of our Constitution, particularly those that resonate in our current conflictual times. She also contemplates whether it is better to continue amending the existing document or scrap it and start all over again. Jefferson advocated the latter every 20 years.

From 1957 to 1961, Thomas Messer was director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and, for part of that time, taught modern art at Harvard. From 1961 to 1988 he was director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. For a time there was a plan to merge the ICA as the modern/ contemporary department of the MFA. The ICA was briefly housed on the second floor of the Museum School. He advised on a couple of adventurous MFA acquisitions. A contemporary department was eventually established in 1971.

Hershey Felder's career has been dominated by his creation of one-man plays in which he portrays a composer and performs the composer's works on piano. After Felder's constructing eight well received musical biographies, TheatreWorks Silicon Valley presents his autobiography set in the same format, with the artist performing works of his own preference and those which were important in his professional development.

From the moment I arrived in Paris, I started writing poems. I was disciplined about that. I was under no illusion that I was going to make much selling poems or plays written in English to a French audience. But I was eager to do something with them. The incongruity of coming to Paris to write in English never seriously crossed my mind.

Having lost the family plantation in Mississippi, Blanche DuBois arrives on the doorstep of her sister Stella and husband Stanley in a working class neighborhood of New Orleans. Sparks fly between the fragile Blanche and the rough Stanley from the outset. No good is likely to come from this punishing relationship.

What struck me after seeing the incredibly acted production of Marjorie Prime at the Helen Hayes Theatre in New York City was that these two plays (Your Name Means Dream was the other) use AI to provide companionship to elderly people.

Island City Stage's strong production of "The Little Foxes," by Lillian Hellman is riveting. The production finds the humanity in the story while steering clear of excess melodrama.

Franz Welser-Möst arrived at Carnegie Hall on January 20 with the Cleveland Orchestra and Verdi’s Requiem. Asmik Grigorian, well known for her dramatic operatic singing, took the soprano solo role. She was joined by Deniz Uzun (mezzo-soprano), Joshua Guerrero (tenor), and Tareq Nazmi (bass), all of whom added vocal pleasures. Lisa Wong directed the chorus.

Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), Divine Color: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal explores the origins of these popular prints— which have historically been overlooked by the art world—and their powerful impacts on Indian pop culture, religion, and society.

Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning and three-time Academy Award-nominated actress, singer, author, and producer Cynthia Erivo joins the Boston Pops in the 2026 Tanglewood Popular Artist Series schedule.

Emerging in the late 1960s during an era of rapid technological change and inspired by the visual language of commercial imagery, Photorealism took shape as artists such as Richard Estes, Charles S. Bell, Ralph Goings, and others created painstakingly detailed paintings based on photographs that pushed the limits of illusion. These artists challenged traditional hierarchies between photography and painting while capturing the nuanced textures of contemporary experience.