The new exhibits just keep coming… I attended three press openings this week, and I’m going to have to take a little museum break, or else invest in some shoes that don’t give me blisters. Read on for details about the new shows and some other events happening this weekend.

And make sure to mark March 8 on your calendar, when the American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery kick off their Distinguished Lecture Series with a lecture by writer Allan Gurganus on Walt Whitman at 4:30 p.m., with free tickets being distributed an hour in advance. I’ll be there and so should you, but please don’t get there before me and steal my ticket (seriously, I even belong to “CyberWalt,” an online nerd-fest).

Thursday, February 28

• The Corcoran Gallery of Art hosts An Evening with David Berman, the subject of Sodium Fox, one of the two complete portraits featured in Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits by Jeremy Blake. 7 p.m. $20.

Friday, February 29

• The Smithsonian American Art Museum opens Color as Field: American Painting, 1950–1975. This show comes on the heels of a year-long Color Field revival in the District, and frankly, we’ve seen enough. Color Field artists (Morris Louis, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, etc.) have ties to Washington, and are known for their large canvases on which they have poured, sprayed, stained or painted washes of color. But there are some pretty paintings, like Jules Olitski’s Cleopatra Flesh, above, and the bright colors might be enough to end winter doldrums. And stop by my artist-crush John Alexander’s retrospective going on downstairs for a really intelligent, humorous and thought-provoking show.

• Lesbian artist Mary Coble, whose work is part of the Hirshhorn’s Recent Acquisitions show, speaks with Ryan Turner at the museum today at 12:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 1

•The Corcoran is opening The American Evolution: A History Through Art today + they’re closing Wild Choir: Cinematic Portraits By Jeremy Blake tomorrow = you should go there this weekend. The new show is culled from permanent collection pieces and presents an evolving view of some of the major facets of the American experience — Money, Politics, Cultural Exchange, Land and the Modern World. The politics section is the most compelling, ranging from a room dedicated to representations of George Washington to one of Kara Walker’s fantastic silhouettes.

• Baltimore Fair for Contemporary Prints and New Editions is a chance to pick up some art for not a lot of dough. 12 major contemporary art dealers, galleries, and presses are on-site for this biennial, which also runs tomorrow. There are some works by Louise Bourgeois, Robert Motherwell, Dieter Roth, and Richard Serra up for grabs, which is pretty awesome. 11 a.m.–5 p.m.

Sunday, March 2

• Let me just say that the National Gallery of Art knows how to throw a press opening. The museum is opening In the Forests of Fontainebleau: Painters and Photographers from Corot to Monet. The show features 100 paintings and photographs that examine the rise of plein air painting in a forest 35 miles from Paris. The artists used to travel to Italy to paint landscapes before realizing that they had some pretty fabulous scenery in their own backyard. Gustave Le Gray’s photographs are fascinating, but it’s Théodore Rousseau who steals the show. Rousseau returned the same sites over and over to paint them under a variety of conditions (morning, night, fog, rain, etc.) and his Sunset Over the Sands of Jean de Paris actually looks like its on fire. The NGA won me over by serving the French menu that they created for the Garden Café for the duration of the exhibit, and it’s excellent. Several area chefs contributed dishes, and following up the show with chocolate mousse with crème anglaise sounds like a recipe for a fantastic afternoon. (Monet’s Bazille and Camille is above)

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