If you can’t seem to keep your spring art fairs straight, try this: “The Art Show is in the Armory on Park; The Armory Show is parked in a hangar on the piers.” So quipped Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (below left) when he kicked off Armory Arts Week at The Art Show, at the Park Avenue Armory, yesterday morning.

This 24^th edition of the Art Dealers Association of America’s annual event is leaner and cleaner than ever. Boutique-like solo shows are presented by 37 galleries, many of whom are capitalizing on their artists’ current or recent inclusion in major museum exhibitions.

A presentation of prints made by Francesca Woodman between 1972 and 1981 at Marian Goodman Gallery (bottom row right) includes a rarely seen large-scale diazotype by the artist, whose work will be featured in a major show opening March 16th at the Guggenheim Museum.

Cindy Sherman, whose work is currently on view at MoMA, is shown here at Metro Pictures with “Murder Mystery.” Begun 1976, this is among the first works in which Sherman posed in staged photographs, resulting in 76 unique collages that enact an Agatha Chrtistie-style Hollywood who-dunnit.

At Margo Leavin Gallery, a striking group of paintings by William Leavitt celebrating the range of his practice, largely inspired by the architecture and landscape of Los Angeles, make a complimentary bookend to the artist’s acclaimed retrospective last year at LA MoCA. Jennifer Bartlett, who made the simple notion of the grid her mantra of Minimalism, starting in the early 1970s, is represented in a condensed overview of her 40-year practice at Locks Gallery.

L&M Arts, the only installation with Chinese-red walls, offers a capsule view of John Baldisari’s work from the 1970s, including a strangely wonderful suite of photos whose occupant is a fluffy white poodle, and the lithograph, “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art,” from 1971.

Presentations based on thematic art forms occupy another 39 galleries, including 20^th Century Abstraction at Leonard Hutton (above right), featuring paintings, sculptures and assemblages by Josef Albers, Marisol Escobar, Franz Kline and Richard Pousette-Dart among others. At Lehmann Maupin (above left), the theme “Artist as Author” is probed by Billy Childish, Mickalene Thomas, and Klara Kristalova, who creates a Black Forest of the mind that evokes lost childhood fantasy, dreams, and nightmares.

Pace MacGill Gallery presents a selection of cloud photographs, starting with Alfred Stieglitz’s “Equivalents,” that explore the multitude of meanings the subject can inspire. Large-scale color work by Richard Misrach, intimate black-and-white contact prints by Edward Weston, Robert Adams, Henry Wessel, Lee Friedlander and Joann Verberg, among others, and a surprising black-and-white image by William Eggleston expand on the practice of landscape photography as metaphor and document.

The Art Show may be the best-dressed and the oldest of the three large and various other small art fairs that will, according to the mayor’s office, draw over 80,000 visitors and generate more than $50 million for the city this week. But this year, some hipness encroaches, with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery’s presentation of Sarah Sze’s installation that combines ordinary materials into intricate structures that speak of the interaction of time, movement, and space. And Greene Naftali Gallery offers major pieces by Dutch artist Daan Van Golden, and Michael Krebber of Cologne, along with a new generation of artists who draw upon 20^th-century -isms, Pop, Appropriation, and Conceptual art to create a new visual language that reinterprets historically significant themes.

The Art Show runs through Sunday, March 11 at the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67^th Street, NY, NY. Hours and information. The Art Show gala and admission fees will benefit the Henry Street Settlement, as will a special edition print by Donald Baechler, produced by Cheim & Read, with Pace Prints. The ADAA Collectors’ Forum focuses on Catalogues Raisonnes this year, with panels on Friday and Saturday. Information. Photos: Peggy Roalf.

This just in from Aperture: Saturday, March 10, 10 am to 1 pm | Armory Week Collectors Brunch; exhibition walkthrough with curator Marcelle Polednik and collectors Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla at 11 am; book signings with photographers at 12 noon. Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27^th Street, 4^th Floor, NY, NY. Free/Information.

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