GALLERIES

On Newbury Street you can buy a $500 gown or a $3 fee shirt; you can eat in a sidewalk
By Amy B. Mcintosh

Three openings in Boston area galleries this week examine the delicate relationship of art and the mind. At the Museum of Fine Arts, through May 28, is "Priscilla and Christopher: a Study in Art Therapy." Like music therapy, treatment of mental illness through art is a growing field, and many of the case histories are perceptive and very moving.

In a completely different way, Saul Steinberg delves into our subconscious at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 955 Boylston St. in Boston. His cartoons in the New Yorker have geometrically-formed people marching across landscapes of plotted-out rectangles and thinking of endless variations on the number "5" or other problems of the human condition. Through June 21.

And the Edna Stebbins Gallery of the First Unitarian Church is offering a unique opportunity to delve into the mind of a man whose ambition was once to be president of Harvard. Elliot Richardson ended up as attorney general instead, and evidently works out his frustrated goal in his doodles, which are on display here until Monday. Raffle tickets are being sold--the winner to get a Richardson doodle of his or her very own. Be the first on your block...

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