MONDAY, MAY 30 , 2011 >>>

1. A down home American icon closes today at the Tacoma Art Museum. The exhibition American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell, which made its only Northwest stop at TAM and features 44 paintings and 323 original Saturday Evening Post covers, will close today at 5 p.m.  The show consists of archival materials showing how Rockwell worked, from preliminary sketches, photographs, color studies and detailed drawings to the finished painting. There's more nostalgia, sentimentality and Americana here than at a lifetime of family reunions and Fourth of July picnics. "Rockwell's works are part of our popular consciousness," said Margaret Bullock, curator of Collections and Special Exhibitions at Tacoma Art Museum. Read the full review of the show here.

2. The Museum of Glass is also open today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A must see is Glimmering Gone, the three-part exhibition by Ingalena Klenell and Beth Lipman. Their "Landscape" part of the installation - inspired in part by the landscape paintings of former Tacoman Abby Williams Hill (1861-1943) - is a 12-foot-high by 25-foot-long by 18-foot-deep installation of sculpted, slumped and fused plate glass. It looks like a winter wonderland of shimmering ice. Read the full review of the show here.

3. Nell Robinson and the Jaybirds will fill the Mandolin Café with sexy vocals and whirling banjos when the bluegrass band kicks it at 6:30 p.m.

4. The Backstage Bar & Grill has the white trash market a home. Every Monday night, while DJ Lo spins Top 40, the Sixth Avenue rock club offers $5 40-ounce PBRs, $2 wells, $3 domestic pitchers, $1 Hamm's drafts, $2 mac and cheese and $5.95 steak dinners under the banner White Trash Mondays.

5. Let's tally up the score for Jazzbones' 9 p.m. Rockaraoke, shall we? A chance to sing onstage with a live band? Yes. Cheap Miller High Life? Yes. A valid excuse to drink on a Monday (repeat, Monday) night? Yes, yes and, oh God, yes.

PLUS: Memorial Day events

LINK: More arts and entertainment events in the south sound

LINK: Live music tonight in the South Sound

LINK: Happy hour!