As the snow melts, several art shows that stayed up through the blizzards will also come down. Here are five shows to catch before winter goes away, although, as the Prince song goes, "sometimes it snows in April."

'The Portrait Tells a Story'

Soviet Russia, the place that perpetrated Stalin's ethnic cleansing, once welcomed thousands of Black Americans, promoting the idea that it was "great to be Black in the U.S.S.R." This exhibit at the Museum of Russian Art features a painting of Lloyd Patterson (1910-42), who participated in a proposed 1932 film project focusing on America's racism, traveling to the Soviet Union with 22 other Black Americans, including Langston Hughes, Dorothy West and Minneapolis journalist/postal worker Homer Smith Jr.

The film "Black and White" was never produced, but Patterson stayed in Russia, married Ukrainian artist Vera Aralova and their kid became a child star. (Closes Sunday. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 10-4 Sat., 1-5 Sun., 5500 Stevens Av. S., Mpls., $5-$14, free for kids under 13, tmora.org)

'Reverberating Bodies'

Artists Christine Nguyen and Dao Strom find inspiration in nature and the cosmos through very different media. Nguyen pairs large-scale paintings with ceramic forms that suggest atoms, while Strom explores themes of displacement, hauntings, mythos and memory through poetry, music, imagery and video. (Closes Sunday. 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Thu., 8-6 Fri., noon-6 Sat.-Sun. plus a reception from 5:30-7 on Sat., Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, 2400 Randolph Av., St. Catherine University, St. Paul, free, gallery.stkate.edu)

'Carriers for Posterity'

Six artists explore questions of family history and the self at Macalester College, piecing together family lineages and exploring the concepts of time and place while simultaneously creating their own traditions. In doing so, the artists center their own lived experiences.

Minnesota artists in the show include Alexa Horochowski, Jovan C. Speller (whose exhibit "Nurturing, and Other Rituals of Protection" opens Saturday at Minneapolis Institute of Art), Rotem Tamir and Maggie Thompson. Alaska-based Merritt Johnson and Houston's Jessica Carolina González represent from outside the Midwest. (Closes Wed. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tue.-Fri. noon-4 Sat.-Mon., Law Warschaw Gallery, 1600 Grand Av., St. Paul. Free. macalester.edu/gallery)

'Winter Exhibition'

Burnet Fine Art puts a bit of color into the landscape through work by a variety of local and national artists. In Duluth-born Anne Labovitz's "Lake III" painting, meditative blue water seems to reflect a pink-and-yellow speckled sky. Robert Mapplethorpe's photolithograph "Calla Lily" poses white petals against a stark black background like the twisting bodies of dancers. Winter wouldn't be complete without Ellsworth Kelly's lithograph of a yellow-and-orange cube. (Closes March 26. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Sat., free, burnetart.com)

'The Promised Land: How Do We Change This'

Self-taught artist Andrew Moore calls attention to racism, injustice, gentrification, domestic abuse and poverty in what he calls "reality art," which acts as a living form of protest. In an immersive installation at NE Sculpture Gallery Factory, he presents a mix of found objects, assemblage and collage works.

A formerly incarcerated man and member of the Black Panther Party, Moore is best known around Minneapolis for using the front yard of his Powderhorn Park home as a space for controversial sculptures. He calls out the way racism is embedded in the founding of America. "My concept is to show people that this 'Promise' has not been a promise to Black people and is something that everyone needs to view differently," he wrote in an artist statement. (Ends March 26. Noon-5 p.m. Thu.-Sat., 1720 NE. Madison St., Mpls., free, ne-sculpture.org)