ART

Miniature golf courses qualify as kitsch, certainly. Nostalgia, probably. But art? A squad of Chicago artists have designed a playable indoors course that replaces the usual picaresque windmills and fantasy castles with earthquakes, wrecked cars, black holes and nuclear destruction. The nearly life-size course--playable at $2 a round--is also an art exhibit titled “Par Excellence!” at a warehouse-sized gallery of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago through Aug. 20. “I started dreaming about having and designing my own miniature golf course back in 1984,” said show organizer Mike O’Brien. “The more I talked about it with artist friends, the more I found that they, too, loved miniature golf.” The course winds up at “Dear One, I’ll See You at the Last Hole in One . . . Take Your Time. . . .,” an elaborate 18th hole fashioned from thousands of ceramic skulls and a grinning skeleton. Balls from that hole are not returned.