Tonight: Take 5: Jazz With Keith Butler Jr. at SAAM 

This monthly live jazz concert series takes place after hours in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery’s iconic Kogod Courtyard, which is the perfect spot to catch your breath and enjoy some AC. The series’ next performance is July 20, featuring jazz musician Keith Butler Jr. Butler hails from Wilmington, North Carolina, and is a 2022 graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts’ music composition program. Now calling D.C. home, he’s a founding member of the music ensemble New World as well as part of the avant-jazz quartet ¡FIASCO! A rising star on D.C.’s rich music scene and a representative of jazz’s next generation, his happy hour performance is not to be missed—especially since it’s quite likely he’ll be playing much bigger venues soon. Butler is currently working on his second album. SAAM will also have board games out for attendees to play and refreshments for sale in the Courtyard Cafe to round out a perfect D.C. summer night. Keith Butler Jr. plays at 5 p.m. on July 20 in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 8th and G streets NW. si.edu. Free; registration is encouraged. —Serena Zets 

Friday and Saturday: Tee-Con at the Convention Center

Tee-Con, the ultimate T-shirt convention, returns to the Washington Convention Center this weekend with a busy schedule of live musical performances, graffiti classes, art demonstrations, DJ exhibitions, and much more. A unique and fully interactive two-day event for all ages, Tee-Con is a place where attendees can play video games, cosplay, learn to create customized apparel, and simply have fun! Created by Michelle “Noodles” Smith, a local artist, entrepreneur, and owner of the Cookie Wear clothing boutique, Smith has been in the fashion industry for more than 20 years. “This is our sixth year of Tee-Con at the convention center,” Smith says proudly. An educational experience for fashion, retail, and design, the convention has previously featured special guests including April Walker from Walker Wear, Carl Brown from FUBU, and Stuart “Izzy” Ezrailson from Commander Salamander and Up Against the Wall to, says Smith, “teach the business of building a clothing brand.” Smith has consistently provided opportunities to other local brands and small businesses, many of them owned by women and minorities. Special for this year, Tee-Con is celebrating the 50th anniversary of hip-hop with an appearance by Andre Leroy Davis, the iconic illustrator and cartoonist from the Source magazine; the local Corinto Gallery will host an art and graffiti battle on Saturday. Smith is a true B-Girl—at the age of 54 she still writes rhymes and journals every day. Her next project is to publish a book about the hip-hop pioneers from the Nation’s Capital. “I feel there is a lack of awareness in the D.C. hip-hop community,” Smith says. “Our pioneers are getting older. My book will be a permanent fixture of history in Washington D.C.” Tee Con runs July 21, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and July 22, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Pl. NW. teeconconvention.com. $10–$20. —Sidney Thomas

Tuesday: SciFi Book Club: The Many Deaths of Laila Starr at Solid State Books

When people make the case for “comics-as-art,” they always seem to trot out the same exhibits: Maus, Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns. Classics, sure, but dusty. Including newer titles like The Many Deaths of Laila Starr would go a long way toward freshening up the roster. The five-issue series, which originally hit shelves in April of 2021, is now available compiled in graphic novel format. If every issue of Laila Starr is a hearty meal, this compilation is a visual feast. Its lush pinks, purples, and oranges illustrate a surreal journey from a land beyond the mortal clouds to the bustling streets of Mumbai. The imagery comes courtesy of Portuguese artist Filipe Andrade, who has previously worked with Marvel Comics and MTV Networks. Andrade’s designs are instantly attractive and engaging. The architecture, from glinting skyscrapers to rusting factories, is gorgeous, and cigarette smoke twists and curls like it has a mind of its own. Former Swamp Thing scribe Ram V. tells the story of suicide victim-turned-avatar for the God of Death Laila Starr as she hunts Darius Shah, who is destined to create a technology that could extend life spans indefinitely. If he is allowed to succeed, Starr’s corner office gig as a bigwig in the afterlife is history. Starr’s pursuit spans decades, and the series consists of vignettes (some funny, some sad, some moderately violent) that coalesce into a meditation on the relationship between life and death. In the story and art, you can see influences from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga, Neil Gaiman, and the Matt Fraction and David Aja run of Hawkeye. Solid State Books’ Sci-Fi book club will be discussing The Many Deaths of Laila Starr at their July meeting; it’s a great opportunity to support a local bookshop and ponder your own mortality (a real chocolate and peanut butter tier combo) all in the same evening. The discussion starts at 7 p.m. on July 25 at Solid State Books, 600 H St. NE. solidstatebooksdc.com. Free. —Will Lennon

Ongoing: Parallel Crossroads of the Americas at Art Museum of the Americas

With an anthropological approach, the Art Museum of the Americas’ twinned exhibit of photographs by Joseane Daher of Brazil and Vicente Gonzalez Mimica of Chile strongly echoes Magdalena Correa’s photo exhibit of Latvia’s Suiti people in the museum’s sister location a few blocks away. Daher’s photographs offer a wider geographical lens, documenting a variety of indigenous and minority communities throughout Brazil, including the face-painting and dances of the Huni Kuin and the fiber harvesting and sporting competitions of the Xavante. Daher also experiments with metaphor in her “Rupture” series, in which she projects images from her documentary work onto cement columns that have crumbled due to mechanical stress tests, offering an objective correlative for the pressures facing Brazil’s indigenous peoples. Mimica’s project, meanwhile, is more focused. He reconnects with communities in Chile’s southern Tierra del Fuego region, where he grew up as a descendant of immigrants from Croatia. Mimica’s photographs are moody to the extreme; the skies over the sheep herds, isolated pubs, and grizzled gold miners are unrelentingly gray, suggesting the landscape of rural Scotland. Mimica’s finest images include an arrow-shaped arrangement of birds flying through the sky; the bumpy, highly tactile surface of open water; and a rephotograph of an antique image of a boy and a girl that is deteriorating artfully into a series of voids. All images by both artists have been shared with the museum digitally, then printed and adhered directly to the walls, minimizing the cost and ecological impact of framing, shipping, and insurance. Parallel Crossroads runs through Aug. 11 at the Art Museum of the Americas F Street Gallery, 1889 F St. NW. museum.oas.org. Free, but visits are by appointment only; contact fgoncalves@oas.org. —Louis Jacobson

Ongoing: Blue Dreams and Poets for Science at the National Academy of Sciences 

The National Academy of Sciences is hosting an immersive video installation billed as “inspired by the intricate workings of microbial networks in the deep sea and beyond.” These gallant microbes may be crucial to earth and life, but—like “Sea Ice Daily Drawings,” another gorgeously styled recent exhibit in the Academy’s curvilinear Upstairs Gallery—the scientific explanation leaves a lot to the imagination. Blue Dreams, the current exhibit, is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving Rika Anderson, Samantha (Mandy) Joye, Rebecca Rutstein, Shayn Peirce-Cottler, and Tom Skalak; it offers a looped video projected from floor to ceiling against the gallery’s semicircular wall. Visually, the work offers surreal shapes in shades of deep purple, red, and hot pink, washing over each other. They range from calming water waves to phantasmagoric flame-like forms to jiggly, sperm-shaped objects. But to the viewer, all the real-world good ascribed to them remains sadly unelaborated. Meanwhile, downstairs in the West Gallery is the more self-explanatory exhibit Poets for Science featuring 24 poems that explore connections between science and poetry. Of these, the most compelling poems are those most divorced from politics: Pattiann Rogers’ ode to the humble, one-celled organisms known as archaeans, Peter Meinke’s pairing of a close call with a subway pickpocket in Paris and his daughter’s research into prehensile proteins known as zinc fingers, and Nobel Laureate Wisława Szymborska’s meditation on the number Pi, impressively translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh. Blue Dreams runs through Sept. 15; Poets for Science runs through Sept. 8 at the National Academy of Sciences, 2101 Constitution Ave. NW. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. cpnas.org. Free. —Louis Jacobson