Free at the Museum: a magical world

Sure, tourists love art museums, if they've just come from happy hour. But do you know what's in your neighborhood museum this summer, and for free?

I love contemporary art. You stand around a giant cube of sewing pins and wise-crack about how you made one in your basement as a kid. Ideal conversation fodder, mixed with a slight reverence ("see what it's saying about urban alienation?").

MFA (Museum of Fine Arts)
Many student IDs get you free admission*. I arrived last Friday, with my quips on pointillism ready to impress, and salsa was in the air. Turns out MFA Fridays just got trendier: 20-30-somethings can schmooze every week this summer in the courtyard. The cocktail bar is still $10 a pop, but my roommate and I skipped right to the dance floor. Well, to the grass, where we unleashed our best cha-cha.

Back inside, a different music. A children's choir performing? Like a virgin... Wait a minute.

Turns out the new exhibition "Seeing Songs," which just opened July 1, holds a 30-television display called Queen. Artist Candice Breitz has videoed 30 Italians crooning in unison, and roughly on key, to 73 minutes of Madonna songs. And what seemed grating at first became priceless. We pointed to this screen and that one: the Madonna wannabe seducing the camera, the Tooth Fairy in pink handcuffs, the transvestite who stops mid-chorus to apply lipstick. Who needs iTunes?

(Check out this excerpt in the Globe.)

*Free to everyone July 19 and August 28.

ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art)
The music continued this week on the waterfront. Come for Target Free Thursday Nights (from 5 to 9 p.m.) and stay for the Berklee bands who jam until the sun sets. Honestly, one floor of galleries should not cost $15 full price. Even when they house Shepard Fairey's controversial ObamaHOPE.

But you can't beat this for an intellectual Thursday out. I covered the floor in 90 minutes and went outside for the sounds of Tubby Love. And the big-kept secret: there's music indoors. Just beyond the cube of sewing pins (I wasn't lying).

I just kept watching a six-minute loop of film, Magical World (artist Johanna Billing). Croatian schoolchildren sing sixties song "We live in a magical world," while outside the camera captures forgotten streets, war-torn sidewalks. But the kids are so hopeful, even if they can't match the Italians' gusto. So sixties and eighties pop in museums? Oh, it's worth every cent.