Late last spring, a man named Cristo--the one who stretched an orange curtain across a canyon (pictured in Life) and wrapped up the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago like a birthday present--revealed plans to stretch a long wall-like fence across the Marin Country peninsula, north of San Francisco. He ran into a lot of problems in his attempted ramble from Susuin Bay to the Ocean--not the least of which was that his route included a national seashore. The project fizzled, and all that remains are his plans. These are being presented, until October 12, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, on Boylston St. in Boston. Cristo's idea, and the opposition it ran into from bureaucrats and property owners, created something of a controversy in San Francisco this summer--Criston, he says, intends to try again next year.

The Fogg Museum is exhibiting graphic works by Roy Lichtenstein. He's the one whose stuff looks like enlarged comic strips, but, as is always the case in these things, has much more redeeming social importance. Check out the review in yesterday's paper for more details. Through Oct.26.

Degas as a painter is usually lumped into the Impressionist category, but, unlike the others of that crowd, he relied a great deal on the use of line in his works. Some of his early portraits fall into a category somewhere between drawings and paintings, and it was by producing a series of monotypes that he finally resolved the conflict between lines and areas of color in his work. Monotypes are made somewhat like lithographs, but only one image is produced, and, in Degas's work, it was then colored in with pastels. Lenore Hill has made studies of Degas's use of color in his monotypes, and is exhibiting them in Boylston Hall's Tichnor Library. An interesting show--through Oct. 10.

Also of Interest:

Boston 200 display of photographs and sketches of immigrants in the North End, at the North End Union, 20 Parmenter St., Boston.

Opening Oct. 5: the annual exhibition of work by members of the Boston Printmakers Association. A fancy show of those who claim to be the best printmakers in Boston. At the Prudential Center.