Beat the January blahs with some blues — or a prize-winning play or an art show. In a few months when everyone is complaining about the heat, you’ll recall that time in the dead of winter when you bundled up and defied the season.

If you’ve never been to the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, now is an opportune time to go on a cultural expedition. The museum’s third floor gallery is currently filled with “beLONGING: Lithuanian Artists in Chicago — 1900 to Now.”

In “Art and Faith of the Crèche,” creed and creativity go together like Christmas and cookies, but you don’t have to be a believer to appreciate the beauty of the nativity sets on display at Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA).

“Letters Beyond Form: Chicago Types” is a modestly scaled but ambitious exhibition currently occupying the Design Museum of Chicago on Randolph Street across from the Chicago Cultural Center.

The Chicago Children’s Museum is now hosting the “Aim High: Soaring With the Tuskegee Airmen” exhibit, an interactive space that encourages play as a means to learn.

The Chicago Fair Trade Museum opened its first permanent location in Uptown this summer with the aim of educating more people about common exploitative and unsustainable trade practices behind the items we use and consume daily.

Femme fatales and goddesses play for keeps at a new exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art. These deities and grande dames — etched in rock or molded from clay — are in Pilsen through July.

“Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective” places an important, underappreciated Chicago artist where she clearly belongs — in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s the first full survey of Ramberg’s work in the nearly 30 years since her untimely death.

It’s an inspiring spring at the Hyde Park Art Center, where two shows by essential Chicago artists are currently in bloom.

The Newberry Library is raising a glass to the Chicago nightclub that helped shape American music and comedy. The new exhibition “A Night at Mister Kelly’s” is a swinging selection of artifacts and eye-opening information about the famous hotspot.

From its home in Oak Brook, the Lizzadro Museum spotlights a captivating collection of stones, both hand-carved and in their natural state. Jade carvings, cameos and dioramas live side-by-side with fossils and rough minerals.

On Wednesday, the Chicago Park District Board of Commissioners approved an admission fee increase that will take effect April 1.

Two large galleries showcase tricked-out vehicles, artifacts and gadgets from 25 films in the series, along with movie clips that set the scene.

The exhibit at the National Public Housing Museum in River North is inspired by the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Evicted” by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond.

“What’s disappointing is that it takes a federal law to push institutions and agencies to comply and to even just create consultation with tribes,” said Eli Suzukovich, director of cultural preservation and compliance for the Office for Research at Northwestern University.

Updated federal regulations require museums to obtain “free, prior and informed consent” from affiliated tribes before displaying or doing research on Native human remains or cultural items.