Mark Rothko is a name in modern art that most people recognize--his prints sell in the Coop, the lawsuits over his estate get written up in the New York Times, some of his paintings are rotting away in a locked room at the top of Holyoke Center. Milton Avery isn't such a famous name, but this is what Rothko had to say about him:

"There have been several others in our generation who have celebrated the world around them, but none with that inevitability where the poetry penetrated every pore of the canvas to the very last touch of the brush For Avery was a great poet-inventer who had invented sonorities never seen nor heard before. From these we have learned much and will learn more for a long time to come."

It couldn't be put in a better way; Avery is an extraordinary artist. The Alpha Gallery at 121 Newbury St. in Boston is showing his works on paper, watercolors, gouaches, oils on paper and monotypes. Go see them. Through May 24.

The Fogg, under the auspices of curator of photography Davis Pratt is having its fifth annual exhibit of Works by Contemporary Photographers. The show will be reviewed in more detail in tomorrow's paper, but let me just add that its worth looking at closely and going back to several times. It's a small show--only four photographers--but a good one. In Gallery 19 through May 18.

Carpenter Center--or rather the Carpenter Center Student's Association--has put together its first annual Spring Show of Student Art. Evidently, as so often happens with student exhibits around here, there was a struggle to get the show together and officially approved. The Student's Association deserves a lot of support from other students for putting together an exciting show--one certainly worth the dash across the street from Lamont. Through June 15.