If your New Year’s resolutions include seeing more art, be it for distraction or engagement, look no further than Chicago’s bountiful museum and gallery scene. From revisionist surveys to unusual solo shows, 2025 promises to provide creatively, at least. “Potential Energy: Chicago Puppets Up Close”: Whether it’s a green felt Kermit the Frog, the 12-foot-tall paper-mâché Little Amal, or that cute little thing you made out of an old sock and a few buttons, puppets are movable sculptures created explicitly for their ability to help tell stories. A rare opportunity to see them up close is provided in this all-ages presentation by over two dozen local artisans and marionette studios. Through April 6 at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., chicago.gov “The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020”: Though its death has been proclaimed many times, painting has reliably kept on going, incorporating developments from early computer programming and cathode-ray tube television to video games and digital design. Featuring work by John Baldessari, Cory Arcangel, Sturtevant, Tala Madani and nearly 60 others. Through March 16 at the MCA Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave., visit.mcachicago.org A still from John Baldessari’s 1977 film, “Six Colorful Inside Jobs,” during which the artist paints and repaints a room. Part of “The Living End: Painting and Other Technologies, 1970-2020” at MCA Chicago. (Electronic Arts Intermix / John Baldessari Family Foundation / Sprüth Magers) “Ground Floor”: It’s time for the Hyde Park Art Center’s biennial celebration of the most thrilling youngish artists in Chicago. Selected from recent graduates of the city’s top five Master of Fine Arts programs — Columbia, Northwestern, University of Chicago, University of Illinois Chicago and School of the Art Institute of Chicago — the show, now in its eighth iteration, reliably captures emerging trends and unpredictable energies. Included are offbeat, rickety sculptures from Sebastian Bruno-Harris, fringed and beaded textile landscapes by Chelsea Bighorn, unrecognizable flying objects courtesy Hai-Wen Lin, and many other surprises. Through March 16 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave., hydeparkart.org “Regina Agu: Shore|Lines”: Born in Houston, Texas, and now based in Chicago, Agu comes naturally by her chosen subject, the historical movement of Black people from the Gulf South to the Great Lakes. Fieldwork and conversations with environmental advocates and ecologists of color, as well as encounters with families living along the waterways that connect these two regions, inform Agu’s large-scale panoramic installation and artist book about the sociocultural geographies of the Great Migration. Jan. 23 to May 17 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave., mocp.org/exhibition/shorelines “Albert Oehlen / Kim Gordon”: What happens when a famed German expressionist painter teams up with a famed punk rock star? Cool things, no doubt, and probably quite loud. The visuals are a trio of 12-foot-tall, shaped aluminum wall hangings marked up by Oehlen; the soundtracks are noises made when Gordon and her guitar jammed with those paintings. Jan. 24 to March 1 at Corbett vs. Dempsey, 2156 W. Fulton St., corbettvsdempsey.com  Kerry James Marshall’s “Africa Restored (Cheryl as Cleopatra),” a 2003 sculpture in the Art Institute’s “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica.” (Art Institute of Chicago) “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica”: First theorized around 1900, Pan-Africanism calls for global solidarity among peoples of African descent. Some 350 objects spanning the 1920s to the present, by artists from four continents, come together in the first-ever major survey of the art and ephemera of this worldview. What does such a resistant, transformative, self-invented planet look like? See maps by Moroccan artist Yto Barrada and Chicagoan Kerry James Marshall, flags from American trickster David Hammons and British painter Chris Ofili, and portrait photography by South African Zanele Muholi and Cameroonian Nigerian Samuel Fosso. Through March 30 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave., artic.edu “Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland”: Redressing the longtime exclusion of Indigenous voices from Chicago’s cultural history, four artists of Ojibwe, Potawatomi and other descents — Andrea Carlson, Kelly Church, Nora Moore Lloyd and Jason Wesaw — curate their own weavings, paintings, sculptures and photography in constellation with related historical and contemporary artworks. Jan. 25 to July 13 at the Block Museum, 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, blockmuseum.northwestern.edu  Detail of of Nora Moore Lloyd’s “Birchbark / Wiigwaas” (2020), featured in “Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak / Chicagoland,” opening at the Block Museum in Chicago in late January. (Provided by Nora Moore Lloyd) “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar”: Renowned for her reclamation of racist caricatures — an early assemblage famously armed Aunt Jemima with a rifle and grenade — Saar is less recognized for her formative work in costume design. That ought to change with this exhibition, which brings together her fashions and jewelry, drawings, photos, archival materials and a ceremonial robe from Cameroon that, when Saar first saw it at the Field Museum in 1974, changed everything. Jan. 30 to April 27 at the Neubauer Collegium, 5701 S. Woodlawn Ave., neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu “A Tale of Today: Materialities”: Buildings, including Gilded Age mansions such as the Driehaus Museum, are literally built from stuff that links to cultural, historical and ecological networks around the world. Guest curator Giovanni Aloi chose over a dozen contemporary artists to follow those materials, leading Rebecca Beachy, Ebony G. Patterson, Jefferson Pinder and others to make new work with everything from Edison bulbs and Chicago River clay to dried leaves collected in Iran. Feb. 7 to April 27 at the Driehaus Museum, 50 E. Erie St., driehausmuseum.org “Wakaliga Uganda”: Picture action films made on an ultra-low budget in a Kampala slum by a homegrown Tarantino, starring local teenagers who do everything from stunts to make-up, editing and screenwriting. Ramon Film Productions, also known as Wakaliwood, was founded in Wakaliga in 2005 by director Isaac Nabwana. Since then, he and his crew have created over a dozen movies, with screenings in international film festivals, Documenta 15, and the collective’s first big U.S. exhibition, coming soon to Chicago. March 1 to April 27 at the Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., renaissancesociety.org  Lori Waxman is a freelance critic.