Maryland Institute College

The Maryland Institute College of Art will hold the world premiere of a 36-minute documentary about Maryland artist and educator Grace Hartigan at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Brown Center, 1301 Mount Royal Ave. Grace Hartigan - Shattering Boundaries, features studio interviews with Hartigan, the director of MICA's Hoffberger School of Painting since 1965, and artists she has influenced over the years. The reservations-only event includes a question-and-answer session with co-producers Janice Stanton and Alice Shure of Amici Films, as well as a reception.

Where: Maryland Institute College of Art's Falvey Hall at Brown Center, 1301 Mount Royal Ave. When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday Why: Hear Shades of Gray, MICA's a cappella group for free at the first a cappella-only event held by the institute. A cappella groups from the Johns Hopkins University (the Sirens) and Lehigh University (Melismatics) will also perform. The event celebrates the release of Shades of Gray's debut CD, Van Gogh's Missing Ear. Information: Call 410-225-2284 or visit www.mica.

Underground comics Underground illustrations are in the spotlight in Comics on the Verge tomorrow through March 14 at Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Gallery. The exhibit, which features nearly 40 artists, includes computer-generated graphics, paintings, prints, toys and, of course, the pages from a variety of comic books. The Maryland Institute College of Art's Decker Gallery is in the Mount Royal Station at 1400 Cathedral St. For more information, call 410-225-2300 or visit www.mica.

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans last year, floodwaters swirled through the city's breached levees, shearing off the branches of hundreds of ancient oak trees and leaving them stranded on porches and lawns or atop the roofs of collapsed buildings. WILLIE BIRCH: EXODUS, REVELATION AND REALITY; CELEBRATING FREEDOM: THE ART OF WILLIE BIRCH / / Thursday through Dec. 17, Decker and Meyerhoff galleries of the Fox Building, Maryland Institute College of Art, 1303 Mount Royal Ave. / / 410-225-2300 or www.mica.

Creative energy zooms through a room in West Baltimore where some 30 members of WombWork Productions high step, spin and dance with arms outstretched in a series of African dance moves, all to the beat of live drums. In the far corner, Sean Keelan, the only white guy present, does his best to keep pace with the Park Heights-based troupe, gathered on a Wednesday night to rehearse performance pieces that deliver a potent HIV-prevention message to city audiences. Keelan is a candidate in a new graduate degree program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. The yearlong master of arts in community arts pairs students with city nonprofit groups to learn how to use art as a catalyst for social justice and how to see the community, itself, as a medium for their own artwork.

History is a river of memories that washes up on our lives bearing the debris of the past. The river keeps rolling on, but we're stuck with the junk that snags in the underbrush along its banks - that terrible tangle of biography, circumstance and chance that makes up the stuff of our world. This is the subject of The River, Maren Hassinger's moving installation about family history, memory and the American melting pot now on view at Baltimore's School 33 Art Center. Hassinger's show is but one of several exceptionally powerful exhibitions affiliated this year with Artscape, the city's annual outdoor festival of the arts, which officially begins Friday.

The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History. Edited by Mary Ellen Hayward and Frank R. Shivers Jr. Johns Hopkins University. 297 pages. $55. With nearly 600 illustrations and substantial text contributions from eight distinguished historians and critics, this is the definitive inventory and guide to the architectural history of one of the premiere old cities of the United States. Some 10 years of research has brought the sweep of the book's survey from the Georgian mid-1700s up today - the reconstruction of the Hippodrome and brand new Brown Center at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Any long-established Baltimorean should treasure this volume for its celebration of tradition and innovation.