Art: Today marks the last day of the Florida Atlantic University’s exhibit on the history of surfing in Florida (here’s a YouTube promo).

The University Galleries won a grant of almost $17,000 in late 2009 to research and mount the exhibit, which has been on display since March 17, and will head to Pensacola Museum of Art this summer. The show, Surfing Florida: A Photographic History, includes more than 50 photographs, a collection of historic surfboards, and contributions from hundreds of Florida surfers statewide.

The exhibit’s final day, which opens at 2 p.m. and closes at 8 p.m. at the Schmidt Center Gallery, will include slide shows with photographers John Tate and Nicholas Lugo, a history of surf music with James Cunningham, and free raffles all day, plus a cash bar (here’s another YouTube promo).

This is a unique, totally Florida exhibit, one that can best be appreciated by residents of the Sunshine State, and it will be an eye-opener for folks who don’t realize how long a history surfing has hereabouts. For more information, call 297-2966 or visit www.fau.edu/galleries.

Theater: The always welcome Laura Turnbull stars in Actors’ Playhouse’s regional premiere of Becky’s New Car by the eclectic Steven Dietz (More Fun Than Bowling, Lonely Planet, Yankee Tavern). She plays a housewife, mother and employee of a car dealership, living a pretty good life, but lately finds herself wondering what more exists for her beyond the usual boundaries of her world. Then, when a grief-stricken millionaire comes into the dealership and mistakes her for a widow, she does nothing to correct him and begins living a double life. Like most of Dietz’s plays, Becky’s New Car is picking up numerous productions around the country, far from New York. Continuing at 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables, through June 3. Call (305) 444-9293 for tickets.

Film: Commercial movies continue to be aimed squarely at teenagers, especially in the summer months, which is what makes The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel such a surprising anomaly. The title hotel, you see, has a clientele of seniors, specifically a handful of elderly Brits who have uprooted themselves and moved to Jaipur, India, where they find their new residence to be a dilapidated pipe dream of its proprietor (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire). Elevating this charming, if decidedly predictable tale about living life to the fullest is such cinematic royalty as Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Bill Nighy -- to name just the most prominent cast members. The other star, of course, is India itself, with its sensory overload of sights, colors, crowds and culture. Opening this weekend at area theaters.

Music: The country trio known as Lady Antebellum has had an enormous amount of success in its relatively brief career since its founding in Nashville in 2006. Last month, they won the Best Vocal Group award at the Academy of Country Music, and tonight they’re appearing at the Cruzan Amphitheatre as a stop on their Own the Night World Tour. Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish also appears, as does Thompson Square. The show starts at 7, and tickets range from $29.25 to $54. Visit livenation.com or www.ticketmaster.com for details.

Pianist Robert Prester returns to the Steinway Gallery in Boca Raton on Sunday for a concert of pieces including a movement from his own piano sonata. Works by Bach, Beethoven, Chopin and Prokofiev also are on the program for the concert, which starts at 5 p.m. Tickets are $20; he’ll play a similar program, though this time with the whole sonata, at the First Unitarian Church of the Palm Beaches in North Palm Beach on May 18. That concert starts at 8 p.m., and tickets also are $20. Call the Steinway Gallery at 982-8887 for more information.

Theater: Actress-writer-former bartender Terri Girvin uses all those skills in her one-woman show, Last Call, a funny and touching world premiere at Empire Stage in Fort Lauderdale -- the cozy former Sol Theatre space -- where the play is in its final weekend. As she did each night when she tended bar, served drinks and put up with the tipsy regulars, Girvin gets quite a workout in her play and we get an earful about her high-maintenance family, plus nuggets of knowledge on how a no-frills, cash-only neighborhood bar works. The play brings to mind Becky Mode’s Fully Committed, the play about a harried restaurant reservationist, but Girvin’s open personality is the key to the evening, just as it probably was the secret of her success as a barkeep. Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale. Through Sunday. Tickets: $25. Call: (954) 383-1896.

Film: The surprise nominee for the feature animation Oscar this year was surely Chico & Rita, the jazz-filled love story from Spain’s Fernando Trueba which sneaked into the running, taking the place of a few more commercial films with wider distribution. Since it lost to Rango, the chances of this visually stunning, music-driven movie being seen theatrically here looked slim, but fortunately Boca Raton’s Living Room Theaters specializes in such niche programming. Piano player Chico falls hard for singer Rita in Havana and they start making beautiful music together, until she heads off to America, he follows, but soon gets deported back to Cuba. The writing is smart, smarter than the parade of sappy live-action rom-coms that fill the multiplexes. Here is an animated flick you do not have to be embarrassed about going to see. Living Room Theaters on the Florida Atlantic University campus, Boca Raton.

Music: Aside from Sunfest, which wraps this weekend on the West Palm Beach waterfront with bands such as Third Eye Blind, Joan Jett, Foreigner, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Pit Bull, there are some other special musical moments taking place.

The final completed symphony of Gustav Mahler has long been associated with a sense of valediction and farewell, with its intense, impassioned finale. But until the endocarditis he didn’t know he had suddenly took over, Mahler was happy and productive, and making plenty of money as director of the New York Philharmonic. True, his wife had started an affair with architect Walter Gropius that shattered the composer, but he and Alma were working through it when he became ill. Still, the Ninth Symphony remains a shattering experience, and this weekend at the New World Center in Miami Beach, Michael Tilson Thomas takes the New World Symphony through it in what will doubtless be memorable performances. It also marks the last wallcast of the season for the New World, so if you can’t make it inside – and both performances are sold out -- you can sit outside and watch it with other outdoor concertgoers. The concerts are set for 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday. For more information, call 305-673-3331 or visit www.nws.edu.

This weekend also marks the season finale for the Chameleon musicians group, which concludes Sunday afternoon with Schubert’s Trout Quintet, featuring bassist Luis Gomez-Imbert and pianist Kemal Gekic along with series founder Iris van Eck on cello, violinist Alla Krolevich and violist Ken Martinson. Also on the program on the second floor of the Leiser Opera Center in Fort Lauderdale is the rarely heard Piano Quartet of Fanny Mendlessohn and the early Piano Trio No. 1 (in F-sharp minor, Op. 1, No. 1) of Cesar Franck. The concert begins at 3 p.m., and van Eck always sets out a nice spread of refreshments for everyone afterward, including champagne. Tickets for the 3 p.m. show are $35. Call 954-761-3435 for more information or visit www.chameleonmusicians.org.

Theater: Eighteen years ago, a wordless theatrical event involving a gang of street urchins banging on garbage can lids and oil drums, making unlikely percussive music with brooms, sticks and other found objects opened off-Broadway, where it continues to this day. The show is called Stomp and the touring edition plays West Palm Beach’s Kravis Center this weekend only. Even those with no rhythm can appreciate how this rag-tag troupe finds music with the darnedest impromptu instruments. Tickets start at $25. Call (561) 832-7469 for reservations.

Film: If seeing the recent Hollywood version of Swede Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has whetted your cinematic appetite for the grisly adventures of Goth computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, you can see all three of the original Swedish movies in the trilogy this weekend at Stuart’s Lyric Theatre. They each screen twice today and Sunday at 2:00, 5:15 and 7:45 p.m. A ticket package for all three films is available for $15. And while you are there, think about joining the Lyric’s Film Society to see more intriguing recent classics-to-be. 59 S.W. Flagler Ave., Stuart. Call: (772) 286-7827.

Music: It’s season-closing time for two more performing arts groups this weekend, as the Delray String Quartet brings in pianist Tao Lin and bassist Janet Clippard for a performance of Schubert’s Trout Quintet at the Colony Hotel in Delray Beach on Sunday afternoon. The program also includes the Schumann Piano Quartet (in E-flat, Op. 44) and an arrangement for the Trout forces of the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. The quartet offers the same program at 7:30 p.m. next Friday at All Saints Episcopal in Fort Lauderdale and April 29 at St. Stephen’s in Coconut Grove. Tickets for Sunday’s performance are $35. Call 213-4138 or visit www.delraystringquartet.com.

The other season-ender is the Master Chorale of South Florida, which wraps up its ninth season tonight in Boca Raton and on Sunday afternoon at First United Methodist in Coral Gables. The program, which features four soloists and members of the Boca Raton Symphonia, is a collection of music inspired by royalty, including English King Henry VIII’s Pastyme With Good Company and Hawaiian Queen Lili’uokalani’s Aloha’oe. Other works include the Coronation Mass (in C, K. 317) of Mozart and Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music. The music begins at 8 tonight at the Wold Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Lynn University. Tickets are $30. Call 954-418-6232 or visit www.masterchoraleofsouthflorida.org.

Art: The Norton Museum of Art this week announced that it is opening an exhibit of three canvases by two great abstract expressionists, Clyfford Still and Joan Mitchell. Officials at the museum point out that the work of these two artists has never been seen at the Norton before. Still’s 1941-A-No. 1 (1949) and PH-1033 (1976) are on display with an untitled work from 1960 by Mitchell. Still usually gets the credit for paving the way for abstract expressionism in the 1940s, and Mitchell with bringing a fresh interpretation to the movement just a few years later. The exhibit, American Masters, is on display through September. Call 832-5196 or visit www.norton.org.

Film: You’ve probably been hearing about Bully, the urgent documentary about the potentially fatal effects of school yard taunts and physical abuses which have too often led to attempts at suicide by the picked upon. The film has made headlines because of its initial R rating, which meant that the very kids who need to see it were theoretically shut out of the theaters. Now, thanks to a compromise and the deletion of a few choice “f”-bombs, Bully has been re-rated to PG-13, and arrives locally this weekend, showcasing numerous case histories of ostracized youths who have been unable to stand up to the taunts and beatings for being weak, different or simply new in town. Director Lee Hirsch captures with great sensitivity the often inarticulate feelings of the bullied, of the parents of dead teens and the indifferent school administrators who allow the problem to fester. – H. Erstein

Theater: Few of the great Stephen Sondheim musicals could be considered family fare, but Into the Woods comes close. This Tony Award winner from 1987 looks at such fairy tales as Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Jack (of beanstalk fame), intertwining them with a vengeful witch and a baker who yearns for a son. The result, particularly in the darker second act, is several lessons on the importance of community and the unexpected consequence of “happily ever after.” It is not a particularly conventional musical, which makes it right up Slow Burn Theatre’s alley, with director Patrick Fitzwater helming a large non-Equity cast, including co-artistic director Matthew Korinko as The Baker. Through Sunday, April 22. Call (866) 811-4111 for tickets.

Music: This Wednesday, the San Francisco-based vocal orchestra Chanticleer makes a return appearance to South Florida with a program of love songs, including a new piece commissioned for the group and composed by Stephen Paulus. Since its founding by Louis Botto, then a graduate student in musicology, in 1978, the all-male chorus has become probably the best-known such group in the nation, with a stellar series of recordings to its credit. The music on the program ranges from Renaissance France and Spain to German Romanticism (the Drei Mannerchore of Richard Strauss) and contemporary American music (Steven Sametz’s Not an End of Loving). The concert begins at 8 p.m. at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale. Tickets range from $29.50-$39.50. Call 954-462-0222 or visit www.browardcenter.org.

Theater: Fresh from its Carbonell win for the best production of a play in 2011 (All My Sons), Palm Beach Dramaworks opens its first foray into the works of South Africa’s Athol Fugard, Master Harold … and the boys, the first of what producing director William Hayes expects will be an annual exploration of plays on the theme of racial conflict. Written in the midst of his nation’s apartheid policy of sanctioned discrimination, this tale of a young white teenager and the two waiters at his mother’s tea shop who helped raise him, is Fugard’s most personal drama. The intermissionless play is like a slow-burning fuse which seems to dawdling, but explode it does and afterwards, you will see that the initial languid pace was entirely intentional. Continuing through April 29. Call (561) 514-4042 for tickets.

Film: There is an art to the making of sushi and nowhere is that exemplified more completely than in a 10-seat counter-style restaurant located below street level in the Ginza subway station of Tokyo, run by an 85-year-old perfectionist named Jiro. Meticulously, he hand-shapes the fish and rice morsels, creating works of art what earned him a three-star Michelin rating -- the highest possible -- triggering foodies from around the globe to make pilgrimages to his humble operation. The film Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary directed by David Gelb, delves into the zen of sushi-making, visiting with Jiro’s sons and disciples as well as the massive central fish market where he selects the choice tuna, octopus and other sea creatures. The result is a feast for the eyes and, if you happen to like sushi, chances are you will make a beeline for a Japanese restaurant after the movie. Opening at Mos’Art Theatre in Lake Park this weekend.

Music: This coming Tuesday, the Palm Beach Symphony gets ready for its future with a gala benefit concert at the Kravis Center featuring a major conductor and a rising soloist. Jahja Ling, now with the San Diego Symphony, will lead an expanded version of the 38-year-old orchestra in the Dvorak Eighth Symphony (in G, Op. 88) and the Piano Concerto No. 1 (in B-flat minor, Op. 23) of Tchaikovsky. The soloist for the Tchaikovsky will be the Tashkent-born pianist Lola Astanova, recently featured in Carnegie Hall’s tribute concert to Vladimir Horowitz. The concert also is a fundraiser for the orchestra, and begins with a 7 p.m. cocktail hour, followed by the concert and a dinner. The music starts at 8 p.m., and tickets start at $30. The reception in the Cohen Pavilion features performances by duo harpists and exhibits from artists Matt Dine and Emanuele Viscuso. Reservations for the cocktail hour and dinner (tickets range from $125 to $500) can be made by calling 561-833-3044. For more information, visit www.kravis.org/pbsgala, call the Kravis at 561-832-7469, or send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Dance: Jerry Opdenaker left Ballet Florida to strike out on his own a few years back, and the stage at the Kravis Center is his for the weekend. His FestOval of Dance features his own O Dance group as well Reach Dance Company, Surfscape Contemporary Dance Theatre, and Houston’s Infinite Moment Ever Evolving. It promises to be an interesting evening of contemporary dance with a host of local performers. Performances continue at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. today, and 3 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $35. Call 832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.