Selected Art Faculty Exhibition

This weekend, the Tang Teaching Museum and Gallery is celebrating its 10th anniversary (congratulations!), but that’s not the only notable art happening on the Skidmore College campus. The Schick Art Gallery will open its annual exhibit of works by selected members of the art faculty tomorrow (Friday).

The five featured artists and media are: John Galt (really? really!) and his cast-iron and bronze sculptures; Patrick Kelley and his digital prints and video stills (pictured, Release, 2010); Sang-Wook Lee and his fiber works; Doretta Miller and her oil paintings; and Iona Park and her mixed-media paintings.

The Selected Art Faculty Exhibition opens tonight (Thursday, Oct. 7) at the Schick Art Gallery (Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs) with an opening reception from 5:30 to 7 PM. There will be an artists’ gallery talk on Tuesday (Oct. 12) at 4 PM. The show will run through Dec. 5. For more info, visit skidmore.edu/schick.

Cymbals Eat Guitars

. . . at least, that’s what Lou Reed says. The apocryphal quote supposedly explained why Velvet Underground records featured very little cymbal. New York bands love their six strings after all, and Staten Island-based Cymbals Eat Guitars are no exception.

The quartet took their rightful place in this auspicious lineage last year when their debut Why There Are Mountains earned widespread “best new music” nods from the indie press. The Velvet Underground are perhaps a misleading reference, though. Cymbals Eat Guitars exhibit all the bored, clever volatility of early-’90s acts like Pavement and Modest Mouse, cut with brooding NW shoegaze and Fender Rhodes.

Sgt. Dunbar and the Hobo Banned and If Madrid will open.

Cymbals Eat Guitars come to Valentine’s (17 New Scotland Ave., Albany) on Monday (Oct. 11) at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $10. Call 432-6572 for more info.

Spamalot

Little did we suspect, back in the day, that the perpetual midnight-screening cult comedy Monty Python and the Holy Grail would become the basis of an award-winning Broadway blockbuster. But it did, and Spamalot, the happy, song-filled Broadway remix, is returning to Proctors for three performances over two days.

Since “Spamalot” rhymes with “Camelot,” the cunning among you have already guessed that the action takes place in the days of King Arthur. There is merriment instead of grandeur, however, with not-so-brave and only intermittently noble knights brandishing shrubberies, battling killer rabbits and trading witticisms with obnoxious French persons. There are also a lot of toe-tapping show tunes, which were not common in the days of King Arthur outside of monasteries.

Spamalot will be presented tomorrow (Friday, Oct. 8) at 8 PM and Saturday (Oct. 9) at 2 and 8 PM on the mainstage at Proctors (432 State St., Schenectady). Tickets are $20 to $60. For more info, call the box office at 346-6204.