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.
