Adrian Paci 

Some downtown office workers may feel deterred from merely browsing at SAM because of, well, the ticket price. If there's not some big marquee show to see, wandering at random through the galleries doesn't seem a good value. But for the cost of absolutely nothing, if you have 45 minutes to spare, walk past the ticket desk to the museum's southwest corner and plunk yourself down on the comfortable leather sofas. There you can watch six videos by Albanian-born artist Adrian Paci (now living in exile in Italy). Without being anywhere near so long as, say, Andy Warhol's Empire, his works are durational—about time and waiting. In Turn On, for instance, a bunch of grizzled Italian villagers sit on what appear to be old church steps, doing nothing in particular. After a while, gas-powered generators are fired up, and you realize they're all holding lightbulbs in the gloom, one per man. The bulbs flare against the dusk, and their indifferent faces are cast into glowing detail. Then Paci, originally trained as a painter, stops down the lens, and the figures fade back into blackness, leaving only a screen full of stars. No popcorn allowed. BRIAN MILLER

Price: Free