GALLERIES

If you're so inclined, check out the Fogg's show on 19th-century sculpture and its reproductions, but otherwise don't bother--much better shows are around. Nielsen Gallery on Newbury Street has a one-man show by VES faculty member Paul Rotterdam that should be especially interesting.

The Peabody's retrospect on 19th-century Boston museums is worth visiting, if only to see the "Feejee Mermaid" that made a fortune for Barnum & Bailey as a sideshow attraction. Carpenter Center's exhibition of hand weaving and basketwork exemplifies Horatio Greenough's dictum that "Beauty is the promise of action," better known as "Form follows function."

"California Realists" at Sunne Savage Gallery, 105 Newbury Street, Boston, displays some choice post-Pop realsim by James Torlakson and Marianne Boers.

"Jubilee: Afro-American Artists on Afro-American Art," at the MFA through January 4, continues its excellent Bicentennial series with a multi-media show on black life in Babylon during this century. Should be wonderful.

"Candid Painting: American Genre 1950-1975" at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln through December 7 surveys the development of realism, (as opposed to Pop or Super-Realism), including such names as Alice Neel and Elaine deKooning.

My Gallery-of-the Week is Harcus Krakow Rosen Sonnabend, 7 Newbury Street in Boston. It specializes in the blue-chip New Yorkers celebrated at the Worcester show. Carl Palazzolo's brilliant, large paintings and drawings are up through November 29. They're more exciting than anything I've seen recently.