Dwell brings you Around the Clock, a weekly guide to events in five U.S. cities. Whether you live in SoHo or Santa Monica, South Beach or San Francisco, Around the Clock is your guide to uncommon happenings in the interlocking worlds of design, culture, food, and more. Go to dwell.com/aroundtheclock to see what's near you—and don't forget to sign up for our single-city editions, emailed directly to your inbox each week.

Thursday, May 1: Barbara Geiger, design consultant for heritage landscapes, traces the history of the sustainable design movement in Chicago using landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted, O.C. Simonds, and Jens Jensen's work to illustrate. 6 p.m.; Millennium Park, 201 E Randolph St.; www.cityofchicago.org

Tuesday, May 6: The Hammer Museum hosts this forum on energy independence with David Freeman, considered the country's premiere authority on energy use, and Robert Bryce, managing editor of Houston-based newsletter Energy Tribune. 7 p.m.; Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd.; (310) 443-7000; www.hammer.ucla.edu

Friday, May 2: Mikhail Baryshnikov, Johnny Depp and Isabella Rossellini are among the 25 video portraits by avant-garde artist Robert Wilson, now on display at The Bass Museum. For a more traditional take, the museum also dusts off its extensive collection of Flemish, Italian, and Dutch portraiture from the 16th to early 19th centuries. The Bass Museum, 2121 Park Ave.; (305) 673-7530; www.bassmuseum.org

Tuesday, May 6: For Masterpieces of Modern Design, the Met shows selections from its extensive 20th century collection, including works by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Eliel Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, Verner Panton, Michael Graves, and others. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.; (212) 535-7710; www.metmuseum.org

Friday, May 2: Before the Industrial Revolution turned us onto synthetic blue pigments, artists and alchemists concocted the color using the woad plant. In this new exhibition at The Hive Gallery, four artists—-Ellen Fader, Judi Pettite, Miriam Fagan, and Jessica Serran—return to the source, exploring natural blue hues in their multi-media work with woad.  The Hive Gallery, 301 Jefferson St., Oakland;  www.hivestudios.org