The Devil's Workshop

Though it's fall, things are hot in Chicago. Just ask the 35,000-plus participants in last weekend's Chicago Marathon, in which one person keeled over dead and the race itself was shut down after a few hours due to heat. Or, on a more pleasant note, if you're in the Windy City before January check out a sizzling exhibition called Sympathy for the Devil at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art.

Named after the notorious 1968 Rolling Stones tune (recently named by Mojo magazine as The Greatest Stones Song Ever), this show celebrates the "convergence of contemporary art and rock music over the past forty years." What a long, strange trip that's been. As the title suggests, the show skews toward the darker and more irreverent side of rock imagery, from the brooding-hipster scene of Andy Warhol's Factory and the Velvet Underground to the psychedelic wackiness of L.A.'s Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. Despite the anti-intellectual subject matter, the curators promise that "this exhibition is the most serious and comprehensive look at the intimate and inspired relationship between the visual arts and musical culture to date." And we thought it was only rock and roll. — Jack Crager