Editor’s Note: Every Friday a list of local and area upcoming entertainment and cultural events will be published on the Steppin’ Out page in the Times-Recorder. To submit information for this listing, please send to Steppin’ Out, c/o Americus Times-Recorder, P.O. Box 1247, Americus GA 31709, or fax to 928-6344 or e-mail to beth.alston@gaflnews.com

Americus

Love of Literacy Gala

7 p.m. — Feb. 13 — Griffin Bell Conference Center

Sponsored by Books for Sumter Children

Tickets $50 each include silent auction opens, hors d’oeuvres and drinks and surf and turf dinner at 7:45. Georgia Southwestern State University Ensemble performs during the evening.

RSVP by Feb. 6 by calling Tommie Thompson at 928-0399.

Valentine Gala

The Caring 4 Seniors Foundation and Innovative Senior Solutions host the third annual Valentine Gala from 7 p.m.-midnight Feb. 14 at the Rees Park Economic Development Center. The Valentine Gala is held annually to assist the Caring 4 Senior Foundation in fulfilling its mission of; linking community resources to keep Seniors and Individuals with Disabilities in their homes by providing community based care and services. Tickets, $40 each, available at the Innovative Senior Solutions office, 231 W. Lamar St. The event attire is black. For information call 229-928-3673.

Annual Murder Mystery Dinner

Feb. 20 & 21, pre-show cocktails begin at 6 p.m.

The Windsor Hotel

The Windsor Hotel, in coordination with Georgia Southwestern’s Dramatic Arts Department, announces the return of the annually popular Murder Mystery Dinner. Prepare yourself for a night of mystery and excitement. The show will bring out your inner detective as you are invited to follow the clues and help solve the murders in this classic whodunit style production.An original script written by GSW’s Jeff Green will have you on high alert with twists at every turn and will be accompanied by a sinfully delicious three course dinner designed by Head Chef Jesse Jones.

Tickets and overnight room packages are now available for purchase. Tickets are $55/person including tax and gratuity and room packages begin at $229.02 including an overnight stay and two tickets to dinner and the show. For information or to purchase tickets call the reservations desk at 229-924-1555 or visit www.windsor-americus.com

The Rylander Theatre

• Blind Boys of Alabama

8 p.m. March 14

Put a spring in your step with five-time Grammy Award winning gospel group, Blind Boys of Alabama. After first singing together in 1944, the group has spanned 70 years of music and numerous albums. Renowned for their musicianship, Blind Boys have collaborated with popular artists such as Ben Harper, Randy Travis, Bonnie Raitt and Lou Reed. Their transition from small town gospel group to high-profile mainstream act is evident with television appearances on 60 Minutes, Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Today Show, Austin City Limits, and more.

www.blindboys.com

Montezuma

Museum Hours

The Macon County Historical Museum, in the old Montezuma depot, is open from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. each Saturday. (It will remained closed on very cold Saturdays.) Also may be seen by appointment. Call Yvonne Sutherland at 478-472-6518.

Atlanta

The High Museum of Art

1280 Peachtree St. N.E.

• Bangles to Benches: Contemporary Jewelry and Design

Ongoing

The High broadens visitors ideas of jewelry as wearable sculpture with this exhibition, which focuses on the scale, range and creative dexterity found in many contemporary designers repertoires today. Innovative contemporary jewelry is paired with other design objects – from chairs to climbing walls – created by key designers in the High’s permanent collection. Ranging from mass produced to one-of-a-kind works and from hand-crafted to digitally fabricated pieces, the works in the exhibition include many of the High’s recent acquisitions by notable designers such as Marcel Wanders, Zaha Hadid and the Campana Brothers.

• Molly Hatch’s Physic Garden

Ongoing

This installation, created by contemporary ceramicist Molly Hatch, is a two-story tall, hand-painted “plate painting” commissioned by the Museum that reinterprets works from its renowned decorative arts and design collection. Physic Garden is installed in the High’s Margaretta Taylor Lobby and is comprised of 456 plates featuring an original design inspired by two ca. 1755 Chelsea Factory plates from the Museum’s Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics, which totals more than 300 works. The historic source plates depict realistic flora and fauna in the Chelsea “Hans Sloane” style of the early 1750s.

• A Painter’s Profile: The High Celebrates Romare Bearden

Through May 31

With this exhibition, the High honors one of the 20th century’s most influential artists and the important recent acquisition of Bearden’s only known self portrait, “Profile/Part II, The Thirties: Artist with Painting and Model” (1981). This focus exhibition delves into the layered references of the stunning self portrait – from the Italian Renaissance to Matisse, African Art to the rhythms of jazz, from Bearden’s reminiscences of his Southern roots to the powerful expression of his spirituality and experiences as a black man in America. In addition, the exhibition will feature the eight other Bearden works in the High’s collection.

• A Painter’s Profile: The High Celebrates Romare Bearden

Through May 31

With this exhibition, the High honors one of the 20th century’s most influential artists and the important recent acquisition of Bearden’s only known self portrait, “Profile/Part II, The Thirties: Artist with Painting and Model” (1981). This focus exhibition delves into the layered references of the stunning self portrait – from the Italian Renaissance to Matisse, African Art to the rhythms of jazz, from Bearden’s reminiscences of his Southern roots to the powerful expression of his spirituality and experiences as a black man in America. In addition, the exhibition will feature the eight other Bearden works in the High’s collection.

• Helen Levitt: In the Street

Through May 31

Showcasing the honest, humorous and inventive works of prolific documentary photographer Helen Levitt, this exhibition will feature 30 works by Levitt from the collections of the High and the Telfair Museums (Savannah, Ga.). One of the best-known street photographers of the 20th century, Levitt (American, 1913-2009) documented the everyday dramas of New York City. Working from the 1930s through the 1990s, Levitt roamed the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem and other urban neighborhoods, capturing the story of city life. As part of the exhibition, the High will acquire 11 prints by Levitt, which will strengthen the Museum’s significant holdings of 20th-century documentary and street photography.

• José Parlá: Segmented Realities

Through May 24

This installation features a group of 10 sculptural paintings by José Parlá that suggest a collection of cultural fragments salvaged from urban sites that have experienced social and cultural upheaval and transformation. Like segments of the Berlin wall, Parlá’s sculptures bear witness to waves of history that seem to be inscribed on their surfaces, told in an expressive and poetic language of the street.

• Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds

Feb. 14-May 24

The High presents a retrospective of work by Wifredo Lam, a preeminent artist of Latin American origin and one of the Surrealist movement’s most influential figures. Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds will feature more than 40 paintings and a selection of drawings, prints and ephemera by the internationally renowned, Cuban-born artist. Many of Lam’s masterworks – drawn from public and private collections across Europe, Latin America and the U.S. – will be presented together for the first time in the exhibition, which offers a rare overview and reexamination of the artist’s career. 

• Imagining New Worlds: José Parlá and Fahamu Pecou 

Feb.14-May 24

In conjunction with Wifredo Lam: Imagining New Worlds, the High presents two solo exhibitions by leading contemporary American artists José Parlá and Fahamu Pecou. Presented in galleries adjacent to the Lam retrospective, Brooklyn-based Parlá and Atlanta-based Pecou’s exhibitions will respond to the work of Lam, providing contemporary perspectives on his life and career. The artists will examine Lam’s artistic legacy through works that explore their own personal reflections on the artist’s involvement with the Surrealist and Négritude movements, his fusion of African-inspired imagery with that of the natural world, and the influence of the Santeria religion on Lam’s artistic approach.

• Gordon Parks: Segregation Story

Through June 7

The High will present rarely seen photographs by trailblazing African-American artist and filmmaker Gordon Parks in this exhibition, presented in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation. The exhibition features more than 40 of Parks’ color prints – most on view for the first time in over half a century – created for a powerful and influential 1950s Life magazine article documenting the lives of an extended African-American family in segregated Alabama. The series represents one of Parks’ earliest social documentary studies on color film. Coinciding with the exhibition, the High will acquire 12 of the color prints featured in the exhibition, which will augment the Museum’s extensive collection of Civil Rights era photography, one of the most significant in the nation.

• Leonard Freed: Black in White America

Through June 7

Alongside the works on view in Gordon Parks: Segregation Story, the High presents selected prints from celebrated photographer Leonard Freed’s multi-year documentary project and 1968 book “Black in White America.” From 1963 through 1966, Freed traveled across the U.S. capturing images of the Civil Rights era, from rural scenes in the South to daily life on New York City streets and political protests in Washington, D.C. This exhibition features 38 black-and-white images by Freed that complement the rarely seen color prints from Parks’ 1956 Life magazine photo essay.

• African Art: Building the Collection

Through May 31

In celebration of its newly expanded Fred and Rita Richman Gallery for African Art, the High is showcasing nearly 40 recent acquisitions of art from Africa to enter the permanent collection. African Art: Building the Collection marks a significant expansion of the African Art galleries, a more than 60 percent increase in the dedicated space for art from the continent. The expansion is the result of a generous pledge from Fred and Rita Richman, longtime patrons of African art at the High and for whom the gallery was named in 2005. Featuring works from ancient to contemporary times and from disparate regions throughout the continent, all of which were acquired over the last nine years, the exhibition provides important insights into African cultural heritage from the past to the present day.

• Dox Thrash: An American Journey

Through May 10

In 1911, at the age of 15, Georgia native Dox Thrash (1893-1965) left the South in search of a better life. He first settled in Chicago, where he launched his artistic career. From visceral images of labor and Depression-era unrest that he created while working for the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s, to recollections of his childhood in the rural South, Thrash’s art offers a broad view of the larger cultural and political environment facing African-Americans at the dawn of the Civil Rights Era. This exhibition will present 43 works on paper by Thrash.

• José Parlá: Segmented Realities

Through May 24

This installation features a group of 10 sculptural paintings by José Parlá that suggest a collection of cultural fragments salvaged from urban sites that have experienced social and cultural upheaval and transformation. Like segments of the Berlin wall, Parlá’s sculptures bear witness to waves of history that seem to be inscribed on their surfaces, told in an expressive and poetic language of the street.

• Art in Bloom

Feb. 27-March 1; Times vary by date

Join the High for a three-day celebration featuring exotic and imaginative floral interpretations of select work from the Museum’s permanent collection. Don’t miss this opportunity to see the High’s collection interpreted in an exciting new way! 

Night Life:

Americus

American Legion Post 558

Ga. Highway 30 West

Open 6-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday

7 p.m. Tuesday is Bingo Night

Wednesday is Games Night

Open 6 p.m.-2:30 a.m. weekends

Friday is Grown Folks Night Out, featuring dance party, karaoke, music video and disco lights show from 9 p.m.-2:30 a.m. Presented by Monster Screen Projections

Saturday is Oldies Goldies Night

Sunday is Members/Guests Night

Astro’s “The Dance Clubb”

153 Sunset Park Road

Entertainment for 21 and over

11 p.m.-until

Thursday: College and Ladies Night

Friday: Midnight Special

Saturday: Dress to Impress Live

I.D. required

Valid college student ID exempt

Floyd’s Pub at BEST WESTERN PLUS Windsor Hotel

125 W. Lamar St.

Ladies Night: Tuesdays beginning at 5 p.m. Ladies only enjoy specials on

drinks.

Live Music:

Fridays beginning at 10 p.m. No cover, must be 21 and older with valid ID.

For more information, call 924-1555. Look for us on Facebook!

G.W.F. Phillips Lodge

The Lodge is open every Friday night with oldies from the ‘70s and ‘80s with Master TJ and Bronco Bill at the Elks Lodge. No teens allowed.

Pat’s Place

1526 S. Lee St. 924-0033

11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Saturday

Quality Inn Lounge (Hillside Cafe)

1205 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

Vickie Craig deejays every Friday and Saturday nights with karaoke from 9 p.m.-midnight and dance music until 2 a.m. Low drink prices and specials

Cordele

Cypress Grill at Lake Blackshear Resort and Golf Club

2459-H U.S. Highway 280 East

www.cypress-grill.com

Karaoke — Thursday nights

Live music — Friday and Saturday nights