Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: AUTO RACING (87%); NASCAR RACING (84%); ALCOHOLS (77%); VENTURE CAPITAL (75%); SPORTS & RECREATION EVENTS (69%); SPORTS (69%); SPORTS & RECREATION (64%); CLIMATE CHANGE (63%); ETHANOL (63%); LEAD (60%); CRIMINAL OFFENSES (50%); LANDFILLS (50%); BLOGS & MESSAGE BOARDS (50%); TOYS & GAMES (50%); CONSUMER ELECTRONICS (90%); CAPITAL CRIMES (74%)
GEOGRAPHIC: UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: April 20, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS (PHOTOGRAPHS BY WENDLANDT: KEVIN CHRISTY. NASCAR: JASON SMITH/GETTY IMAGES. EXERCISE: STEVE SANFORD. CAT: MARC ALARY

JUNK: R. O. BLECHMAN. FUNERAL: KENT CASKET. TREES: MARC ALARY. DIAPER: THOMAS HANNICH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. BEAVAN: KEVIN CHRISTY

ECO ANXIETY: R. O. BLECHMAN. PUCK: THOMAS HANNICH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. URBAN: DERVAES/PATH TO FREEDOM. WALTER: KEVIN CHRISTY. CLOTHESLINE: MARC ALARY.)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

851 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 19, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

Bush Names Housing Secretary, but Some Question Whether He Is Right for Job
BYLINE: By RACHEL L. SWARNS; Ron Nixon contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 887 words
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
President Bush chose Steven C. Preston on Friday as his new housing secretary, praising him as a ''consensus builder'' and ''a reformer who would act aggressively'' to help families facing foreclosure to stay in their homes.

But several lawmakers and housing advocates said they remained uncertain whether Mr. Preston, 47, who currently heads the Small Business Administration, would push the federal housing agency to embrace a more assertive role in the nation's housing crisis or would instead serve as merely a caretaker in the waning months of the Bush administration.

Mr. Preston would certainly inherit significant challenges as the head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has come to new prominence recently in the administration's effort to help staunch the flood of foreclosures across the country.

The Federal Housing Administration, the branch of HUD that officials are asking to help hundreds of thousands of vulnerable homeowners refinance to stable, government-backed loans, is on the brink of insolvency. Democrats and some Republicans argue that the department's budget for public and low income housing is inadequate.

And some lawmakers, even as they welcome the change in HUD's leadership, remain skeptical that the Bush administration's approach to the flood of foreclosures is adequate to the need.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is chairman of the Banking Committee and has been strongly critical of the departing secretary, Alphonso R. Jackson, also noted that Mr. Preston would be landing in the job without any experience in housing matters.

''We need a strong leader at the Department of Housing and Urban Development,'' Mr. Dodd said. ''Yet the president's choice has no apparent housing background, which raises questions.''

Dismissing such concerns, Mr. Bush praised Mr. Preston as a leader ''who's earned the respect of Republicans and Democrats, who can get things done.''

Mr. Jackson, 64, resigned in the midst of a federal investigation into whether he steered lucrative housing contracts to friends. On Friday, Mr. Bush praised him as ''a decent man, a dedicated man,'' who had ''worked tirelessly to help America's homeowners.''

Bush administration officials say Mr. Preston, who won easy Senate approval for his current posting, is well positioned to succeed Mr. Jackson in handling the housing crisis, particularly given his experience in government and in the private sector.

Before being named S.B.A. administrator in 2006, Mr. Preston served as executive vice president of the ServiceMaster Company, a multibillion-dollar corporation whose businesses include TruGreen ChemLawn, a lawn care company, and Terminix, a pest control company. Earlier in his career, he worked as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers.

Mr. Preston said he joined the Bush administration in the first place because of his belief ''in the vision of helping people reach their dreams of owning a business, owning a retirement portfolio and, of course, owning a home.''

As for the current problems in housing, Mr. Preston said, ''Our solutions must restore confidence in our markets while not erecting barriers to future entrepreneurs, investors and home buyers.''

Over the years, Mr. Preston has won praise from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for bringing stability to the Small Business Administration, which has been devastated by budget cuts and poor performance after Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Preston made fixing the disaster loans program, which provides long-term loans to homeowners and businesses, his priority when he took office.

He also tackled an issue that had dogged the agency under previous administrators, instances in which large companies received small-business contracts.

But his tenure was not without controversy. In 2007, S.B.A. workers reported to their superiors that the agency, in an effort to speed the disaster loans process after months of criticism, made thousands of loans without following its own rules to avoid fraud.

And earlier this year, Mr. Preston was sharply criticized when Democrats in Congress learned that his agency had given a $1.2 million contract to a former Bush administration official who lacked experience in helping small businesses compete for government contracts.

The contract went to a company owned by Vernon B. Parker, who served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Agriculture Department from 2003 to 2006. Mr. Preston called on the agency's inspector general to investigate.

On Friday, Mr. Preston began reaching out to housing advocates, making telephone calls to introduce himself.

''He has a reputation as a good manager and that's certainly what HUD needs at this point,'' said Sheila Crowley of the Low Income Housing Coalition, who received a call. ''But there is not a lot of time, and there are a lot of problems at the agency.''

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York and a member of the Banking Committee, said he was hopeful that Mr. Preston was up to the job.

''The No. 1 criteria for this job is strength and independence to persuade the administration that more government involvement is needed on the housing crisis and the economy,'' Mr. Schumer said. ''It remains to be seen whether Mr. Preston has these qualities.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: HOUSING AUTHORITIES (94%); FORECLOSURE (90%); POLITICAL PARTIES (90%); PUBLIC HOUSING (90%); US REPUBLICAN PARTY (89%); LEGISLATIVE BODIES (89%); US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT (89%); US DEMOCRATIC PARTY (89%); LEGISLATORS (89%); US PRESIDENTS (79%); HOUSING ASSISTANCE (78%); HOMEOWNERS (78%); BANKING & FINANCE (76%); APPROVALS (71%); SMALL BUSINESS (71%); LOW COST HOUSING SCHEMES (69%); CITIES (69%); LANDSCAPING SERVICES (61%); INVESTIGATIONS (50%); LOW INCOME PERSONS (74%)
COMPANY: SERVICEMASTER CO (80%); LEHMAN BROTHERS HOLDINGS INC (54%); TRUGREEN-CHEMLAWN (50%)
ORGANIZATION: SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (57%)
TICKER: LEH (NYSE) (50%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS561730 LANDSCAPING SERVICES (80%); NAICS561720 JANITORIAL SERVICES (80%); NAICS561710 EXTERMINATING & PEST CONTROL SERVICES (80%); SIC7349 BUILDING CLEANING & MAINTENANCE SERVICES, NEC (80%); SIC7342 DISINFECTING & PEST CONTROL SERVICES (80%); SIC0782 LAWN & GARDEN SERVICES (80%); NAICS523110 INVESTMENT BANKING & SECURITIES DEALING (54%); SIC6211 SECURITY BROKERS, DEALERS, & FLOTATION COMPANIES (54%)
PERSON: GEORGE W BUSH (94%); ALPHONSO JACKSON (67%); CHRISTOPHER DODD (67%)
GEOGRAPHIC: CONNECTICUT, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (95%)
LOAD-DATE: April 19, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
April 19, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

China Needs Old Boys With M.B.A.'s
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; TALKING BUSINESS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1620 words
One evening in Beijing, I wandered into a local bookstore. I couldn't read a thing, of course, but I had been told that Chinese urbanites are voracious readers, and that I could get a feel for that in any decent bookstore. The place was enormous; its five floors of wall-to-wall books made your typical suburban Barnes & Noble look puny by comparison. Shoppers sat on the floor, reading.

But here's what really struck me. You know how, when you walk into a Barnes & Noble, the first thing you see are the hot new hardcover fiction titles? Not in this place. Instead, that first, precious point of sale was reserved for, of all things, management books.

On shelf after shelf, I could see copies of Jim Collins's ''Good to Great,'' Jack Welch's ''Straight From the Gut,'' Tom Peters's ''Re-Imagine!'' and just about everything the late Peter Drucker ever wrote. There was no management topic, no matter how arcane -- the science of H.R. anyone? -- that didn't have its own section.

There's a good reason for this. In the West -- not to mention Japan and South Korea -- management skills are a given. Graduate schools of management churn out M.B.A.'s, while instilling the basic processes and systems that virtually all multinational companies rely on. People who rise to the top of companies are the ones who have mastered the art of management. But there are also many first-rate managers who populate the middle ranks of companies. They are the lifeblood of most big companies.

Not so in China. ''The shortage of managerial talent is huge,'' said Zheng Yu-sheng, the associate dean at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. In the course of my two weeks in China, I heard this refrain constantly -- and not just from business school professors. ''We are constantly looking for chief financial officers who can speak Mandarin,'' said Thomas Tsao of Gobi Partners, a Shanghai-based venture capitalist. ''There just aren't very many people here who have the range of skills you need in that position.''

''It is very hard to find a chief operating officer,'' said Mathew McDougall, an Australian who started an Internet ad company called SinoTech in Beijing. He continued: ''The people who make good C.O.O.'s are usually entrepreneurial enough that they'll go off and start their own business instead. Either that or they'll get picked off by the multinational companies.''

Xiang Bing, dean of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, said: ''We Chinese are so willing to work hard for money. We are intelligent. We have the drive and the passion. But we put too much attention on technology and not enough on institution-building. And our soft skills are a real weakness.''

And then there is Lei Yi, the president and chief executive of Caxa Technology, a Beijing software company that caters to big manufacturers. I visited Mr. Yi one afternoon to learn a little about his company, but it wasn't long before he was talking about management issues.

A former aeronautics professor at Beijing University, Mr. Yi started his company five years ago. His central notion was that large manufacturers in China badly needed design and process software -- and he was right. A year ago, he had a little over 400 employees; today, he's up to 800. He'll surely have over 1,000 employees by the end of 2008. Caxa, in other words, is growing like crazy. But then, so is the need for its services. ''Right now,'' said Mr. Yi, through a translator, ''the pace of our development cannot meet the pace of the industry's development.''

It is obvious that Caxa has a huge opportunity in front of it, but to take full advantage, the company needs to get much bigger. Which means Mr. Yi needs a real management system in place. He also needs a first-class human resources operation; most Chinese entrepreneurs hire friends and family because they don't trust people they don't know.

Right now, Mr. Yi told me, the company is in the process of raising capital, some of which he'll use to ''bring in a consultancy or managers from the outside.''

Then he sighed. ''I need to become a professional manager,'' he said.

Five years ago, in an effort to help China develop corporate managers, Mr. Xiang founded the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, with funding from the Li Ka-shing Foundation. (Mr. Li, a Hong Kong developer and businessman, is one of the wealthiest men in the world.) Mr. Xiang , who got his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta, was then teaching at Beijing University's business school, where he started the school's executive M.B.A. program. Like the Chinese entrepreneurs he teaches, Mr. Xiang saw his opportunity, and went for it.

Like any business school, Cheung Kong has an M.B.A. program. But its real calling card is its executive M.B.A. program, a four-day-a-month, 19-month program aimed primarily at Chinese entrepreneurs who have come to the stark realization that if they don't get help fast, they are going to lose control of their rapidlygrowing businesses. Its faculty comes from places like Wharton and Harvard Business School. At $68,500, it is by far the most expensive such program in China. Among its best-known alumni are Jack Ma, who founded Alibaba.com, and Jason Jiang of Focus Media.

Rapid growth, though, is only one of the issues these entrepreneurs are facing. Every bit as difficult are ingrained mind-sets and attitudes that can make it difficult for Chinese executives to adapt professional management techniques.

Chiang Jeongwen, a marketing professor at the school, told me that many Chinese entrepreneurs -- even those who have graduated from the executive M.B.A. program -- don't want to hire M.B.A.'s because they bridle at having to pay professional management salaries. Another problem, he said, was that many Chinese executives believe that ''because it is a Chinese business, professional managers won't fit in the system.''

Indeed, that is really the nub of the problem. When dealing with each other, the Chinese, quite simply, do business differently than Western companies do business. For one thing, there is a lot of petty corruption that is an ingrained part of business, especially among the state-run companies. Purchasing managers favor one vendor over another because they get a kickback. A sales rep buys customer loyalty with under-the-table payments. And so on.

People also tend to put their own interests over the interests of their company -- not a huge surprise, given that everyone worked for the state just a generation ago. Middle managers tend not to take much initiative. ''Somebody said to me the other day, 'We are paid to obey,' '' said one American manager at a Chinese company. (He requested anonymity because the interview was not authorized by the company.) For Chinese companies to play on the global stage, these are all habits that need to diminish.

But there are also things that can seem straightforward to a Westerner that are anything but in China. ''Take the word 'accountability,' '' said Liu Chijin, the chairman of Pan Pacific Management Institution, a management consulting firm he founded in 1999. ''It is a natural concept in the West. Here, people know what it means, but it is not in their blood. If you give them an assignment, tomorrow they are likely to tell you that something else came up.''

Finally, there is the gnarliest issue of all: the importance placed on the deep, intertwining set of relationships known as guanxi. Unlike the West, you don't just have a business relationship in China; you have a relationship that interchangeably mixes the personal with the professional.

''Most Americans would say that we have it as well with the old boys network,'' said Mr. Chiang, the marketing professor. ''But Chinese intertwine business and personal affairs much more deeply. They do things for their partners even if they are personal affairs. And it is very difficult to disentangle what is institution to institution and what is person to person.'' On the one hand, this leads to a sense of deep mutual loyalty. On the other hand, it is at the heart of the petty corruption that is so prevalent.

One question I wondered about was whether Chinese companies would inevitably have to become Westernized in order to play on the global stage. Most of the management experts felt that the process and systems that had been developed over decades by the likes of General Electric and Toyota had spread because they worked -- and the Chinese would have to adapt to them. ''There is no pure American way or German way to do business,'' Mr. Liu said. ''When you cut to the bone, you are still dealing with growth, profitability, return on assets.''

I also wondered if that was a good or a bad thing. Most entrepreneurs I spoke with talked about the need to retain at least some aspects of a Chinese business culture. It allowed employees to feel rooted in the company, and gave customers a higher level of comfort. Somewhat to my surprise, Mr. McDougall, the Aussie who founded SinoTech, was one of the fiercest advocates of this approach. ''We only speak Mandarin in the office,'' he said. ''We want to be viewed as a Chinese company. We deal with investors in the American way, but we deal with customers in the Chinese way. In the U.S., you talk to customers about your unique selling proposition. In China, you talk to them about schools, your family, your friends in common, and what you can do for them.''

As the interview was coming to a close, I asked him about SinoTech's growth rate. ''We were six people six months ago,'' Mr. McDougall replied. ''We are 120 people now. We'll be 500 people by the end of the year.''

He laughed and gave me a helpless little shrug. ''It's China,'' he said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BOOKSTORES (91%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (86%); SELF EMPLOYMENT (74%); MANAGEMENT THEORY (74%); EDUCATION (70%); MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS (64%); VENTURE CAPITAL (60%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (65%); BUSINESS EDUCATION (89%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (93%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (93%)
PERSON: JACK WELCH (56%); MICHAEL MCMAHON (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BEIJING, CHINA (88%); SHANGHAI, CHINA (79%) NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (91%); EAST CHINA (79%); HUNAN, CHINA (57%) CHINA (96%); JAPAN (79%); SOUTH KOREA (74%)
LOAD-DATE: April 19, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

853 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 19, 2008 Saturday

Late Edition - Final

Russian Feud Goes to Court In London
BYLINE: By JOHN F. BURNS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 8
LENGTH: 281 words
DATELINE: LONDON
A long-running feud between two of the richest post-Soviet entrepreneurs reached the High Court in London on Friday.

The court began hearings on a $2 billion lawsuit by Boris Berezovsky, self-exiled in London since 2000, against Roman Abramovich. The two so-called oligarchs amassed fortunes in Russia during the privatization of state-owned assets in the 1990s, when the country's first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin, oversaw a large sell-off of the Soviet Union's principal industries, including oil and gas.

Mr. Berezovsky alleges that the London-based Mr. Abramovich, acting in concert with the current Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, used threats of state confiscation to force Mr. Berezovsky and a partner, the Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili, to sell their interests in several companies at prices far below market value. The companies were a Moscow television station, the Sibneft oil and gas conglomerate, and the aluminum producer Rusal.

Mr. Abramovich's lawyer, Andrew Popplewell, speaking at the High Court, said the claims were unfounded, according to Agence France-Presse. ''The arguability of the claims depends wholly on oral conversations which are not documented,'' he said.

The lawsuit is the latest twist in a saga that has included Mr. Patarkatsishvili's unexpected death, of natural causes, at his estate south of London in February, and the 2006 murder in London of Aleksander V. Litvinenko, a former K.G.B. agent who was an associate of Mr. Berezovsky's. Mr. Litvinenko ingested a deadly dose of radioactive polonium 210 that British prosecutors have traced to a former K.G.B. associate of Mr. Litvinenko's who met with him in London.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: LITIGATION (90%); SUITS & CLAIMS (90%); LAW COURTS & TRIBUNALS (90%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (78%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (78%); PRIVATIZATION (78%); STATE OWNED BUSINESSES (76%); MURDER (75%); HEADS OF STATE & GOVERNMENT (71%); JUSTICE DEPARTMENTS (67%); ALUMINUM INDUSTRY (53%); ALUMINA & ALUMINUM PRODUCTION (53%); TELEVISION INDUSTRY (53%)
COMPANY: UNITED CO RUSAL (56%); AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE (55%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS518111 INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS (55%); SIC7375 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SERVICES (55%)
PERSON: ROMAN ABRAMOVICH (73%); VLADIMIR PUTIN (56%); BORIS BEREZOVSKY (93%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LONDON, ENGLAND (93%); MOSCOW, RUSSIA (58%) ENGLAND (93%); UNITED KINGDOM (93%); RUSSIA (92%)
LOAD-DATE: April 19, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

854 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 18, 2008 Friday

Correction Appended

Late Edition - Final
The Listings
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; Pg. 26
LENGTH: 2180 words
ART

Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.

Museums

ASIA SOCIETY AND MUSEUM: 'DESIGNED FOR PLEASURE: THE WORLD OF EDO JAPAN IN PRINTS AND PAINTINGS, 1680-1860,' through May 4. Organized by the Japanese Art Society, this show anchors the ''floating world'' of ukiyo-e prints firmly in economic and social reality. It includes works by well-known artists, including Hokusai and Hiroshige, and emphasizes the entrepreneurial role of print publishers and the relationship between printmaking, painting and literature in the Edo period. Because the prints are sensitive to light, ''Designed for Pleasure'' will be shown in two installments. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, [phone], asiasociety.org.

(Karen Rosenberg)

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: '$;MURAKAMI,' through July 13. Bring the kids and the shopping-centered tweens. This survey of Takashi Murakami, the artist frequently called the Japanese Andy Warhol, has it all: immense, toylike sculptures; an animated cartoon that rivals Disney; and a fully functioning Louis Vuitton boutique selling Murakami bags. But it also elucidates the trajectory of an artist who began by recycling Japanese popular culture and then gradually figured out how to go deeper, harnessing Japanese traditions of painting, craft and spirituality. The art-commerce, high-low conundrums are fun, but the steady improvement in the paintings is the real heart of the matter. Along with the animated cartoons, there is a moral component as well. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, [phone], brooklynmuseum.org.

(Roberta Smith)

THE FRICK COLLECTION: 'PARMIGIANINO'S ''ANTEA'': A BEAUTIFUL ARTIFICE,' through April 27. Exhibitions don't come any smaller than ''Parmigianino's 'Antea': A Beautiful Artifice.'' A painting, a wall text, a nugget of a scholarly catalog, and that's it. It's enough. Certain pictures, like certain performers, don't need troops of extras to make a large effect. Solo suits them. 1 East 70th Street, [phone], frick.org.

(Holland Cotter)

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: 'CAI GUO-QIANG: I WANT TO BELIEVE,' through May 28. This museumwide survey of a leading Chinese artist indicates considerable command of cross-cultural references and extreme appropriation, including a gang of sculptors remaking a classic Social Realist ensemble of life-size figures while you watch. Gunpowder is a favored material, violence a frequent motif. A stop-action installation of seemingly exploding cars hangs in the atrium space. Scores of arrows make pincushions of snarling tigers (stuffed), and there are carved-wood religious sculptures and an entire fishing boat. Videos documenting pyrotechnical land-art pieces go boom. The show has far more than its share of hollow spectacle. The scorched, mural-size gunpowder drawings that combine elements of performance art, Abstract Expressionism and traditional Chinese and Japanese painting are the most believable. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, [phone], guggenheim.org. (Smith)

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 'ARCHIVE FEVER: USES OF THE DOCUMENT IN CONTEMPORARY ART,' through May 4. You need no grounding in art theory to understand the messages generated by this powerful show. The archive of the title is less a thing or a place than a concept, an immersive environment: the sum total of documentary images circulating in the culture, on the street, in the media and finally in what is called the collective memory. From an Andy Warhol silk-screen of a black civil rights demonstrator attacked by police dogs, to a gallery wallpapered with the front pages of international newspapers reporting on the destruction of the twin towers, truth, untruth and their consequences make up the riveting story here. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, [phone], icp.org. (Cotter)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: 'JASPER JOHNS: GRAY,' through May 4. Since his paintings of targets and American flags took the art world by storm 50 years ago, Jasper Johns has been a cultural fact and the subject of numerous exhibitions. But this is one of the best. Moody, opulent and eloquent, it singles out his many paintings in gray, the color at the core of his sensibility, along with numerous sculptures, drawings and prints that are inherently gray. Together they chronicle his maturation from brilliant, methodical young artist to a deeper, more lyrical, less predictable one. And frankly, it is almost a relief to follow the incessant unfolding of this singular career without the brightly colored masterpieces. [phone], metmuseum.org. (Smith)

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: 'COLOR CHART: REINVENTING COLOR, 1950 TO TODAY,' through May 12. Organized by Ann Temkin, a curator in the museum's department of painting and sculpture, color functions as a ready-made in ''Color Chart'' -- something to be bought or appropriated, rather than mixed on a palette. The show is a rejoinder to the notion of color as the province of formalists, and to the idea that Minimal and Conceptual art comes only in shades of black, white and gray. In the upper section of the lobby a floor created by the artist Jim Lambie surrounds concentric strips of brightly hued tape. In the galleries there are classics by Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Rauschenberg and Sherrie Levine. [phone], moma.org. (Rosenberg)

NEW MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART: 'TOMMA ABTS,' through June 29. The small, hard-edged abstractions by this German-born painter, who is based in London and was the 2006 Turner Prize winner, are not showy, but they are intensely absorbing. Basic formal elements like stripes, arcs, circles, planes and polygons are carefully layered, juxtaposed and interwoven in all sorts of subtly eccentric ways. Ms. Abts's colors are muted but seductive, and she adds highlights and shadows, creating mysterious, three-dimensional illusions. 235 Bowery, at Prince Street, Lower East Side, [phone], newmuseum.org. (Ken Johnson)

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART: 'WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2008,' through June 1. This year's light-touch show takes lowered expectations -- lessness, ephemerality and failure, to use the words of its young curators, Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin -- as its theme, and makes at least an appearance of trying to circumvent an object-obsessed market. With 81 artists, this is the smallest Biennial in a while, and feels that way, even as it fills three floors and more of the museum, and continues at the Park Avenue Armory (at 67th Street), with a program of installation and performance art. If the overall mix feels uncharismatic, there are good artists on hand, most with work commissioned by the museum for the occasion. In an anti-triumphalist show, uncertainty, political and existential, rules. [phone], whitney.org. (Cotter)

Galleries: Uptown

'RE-ORIENTATIONS: ISLAMIC ART AND THE WEST IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES' There have been major exhibitions on the influence of Islamic culture on Europe. But relatively few have traced influence the other way, which is what this small, scholarly show, the product of a Hunter College art history seminar, does. Using little-studied objects from the Metropolitan Museum's Islamic collection, it looks at art produced in India, Iran and Iraq in the 18th and 19th centuries, when Western colonial influences were flowing in. Far from being an aesthetically dim era, it was one of fascinating, complex change. Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, Hunter College, 68th Street at Lexington Avenue, [phone], hunter.cuny.edu, through April 26. (Cotter)

Galleries: Chelsea

MARTHA WILSON: 'PHOTO/TEXT WORKS, 1971-74' In 1976 the conceptual artist and performer Martha Wilson opened her TriBeCa loft to the public as Franklin Furnace, a nonprofit documentary center, archive and exhibition space for artists' books and ephemera that housed some of the most intriguing and fleeting work in town. More than 30 years later, Ms. Wilson is having a show of her own 1970s work, which was in sync with early feminist concerns about distorted and self-distorting images of women. But it also explored what it meant to be self-created and constantly self-revised as an artist and as a person. It's her first solo ever, and it's a gem. A pioneer in preserving art turns out to be a pioneer in creating it. Mitchell Algus Gallery, 511 West 25th Street, [phone], mitchellalgus.com through April 26. (Cotter)

Galleries: Other

ANNA CRAYCROFT: 'THE AGENCY OF THE ORPHAN' In her impressive solo debut Ms. Craycroft systematically explores why so many protagonists of 19th- and 20th-century fiction have been orphans. A wraparound installation displays 295 framed photographic portraits of orphan heroes from literature, movies and animated cartoons, and Victorian-style fountains feature heads of weeping children. Ms. Craycroft's provocative book, combining semiotic and Jungian analysis, explains what it all means. Tracy Williams Ltd., 313 West Fourth Street, West Village, [phone], tracywilliamsltd.com, through next Friday. (Johnson)

Last Chance

NINA CHANEL ABNEY: 'DIRTY WASH' This promising young painter has race on her caustically inclined mind, and a developing style that could be said to negotiate a truce between Robert Colescott and Kara Walker; history painting and political caricature; and the nation's diverse shades of skin. Minstrelsy plays its part. The results include Condoleezza Rice in a bikini, Al Sharpton in a fireman's hat and Barack Obama crossing the Delaware. All are all put forth with a raucously beautiful palette and malevolent details lurking in every corner. Kravets/Wehby Gallery, 521 West 21st Street, Chelsea, [phone], kravetswehbygallery.com; closes on Saturday. (Smith)

'COUP DE GRACE' A new addition to the Lower East Side art scene is the clean, well-lighted space of Simon Preston, formerly of the Project. This inaugural show centers on the merciful death blow that is intended to end suffering. Daniel Joseph Martinez's mechanized sculpture spews fake blood onto the wall and floor from a nozzle hidden in a stuffed rabbit. Mary Kelly imagines a postcard from the mother of James Chaney, the murdered civil rights worker. Michelle Lopez adds prosthetic limbs to a tree branch. Touhami Ennadre and General Idea round out the theme of anguished death and the violated body, and no one has any intention of putting us out of our misery. Simon Preston, 301 Broome Street, between Eldridge and Forsyth Streets, Lower East Side, [phone], simonprestongallery.com; closes on Wednesday. (Smith)

CARROLL DUNHAM, 'PAINTINGS ON WOOD, 1982-1987' Few careers in painting have been more consistently interesting to follow over the past 25 years than Carroll Dunham's. It all began back in the early 1980s when he discovered plywood. From 1982 to 1987, he painted on laminated pine and later on panels covered with more exotic veneers, creating abstract, funny and strange duets of grainy wood and polymorphous paint. This vibrant exhibition presents a selection of those seminal works. Skarstedt Gallery, 20 East 79th Street, [phone], skarstedt.com; closes on Saturday. (Johnson)

LABORATORIO 060 This spare show, part documentary, part participatory, is the work of the Laboratorio 060, a Mexico City artists' collective that for the most part operates outside of the traditional gallery setting. It creates interventionist projects with street vendors as collaborators; it rethinks the notion of beauty by asking young women to pose in a street vending stall as the Venus de Milo; it brings art to new audiences by turning rush-hour traffic into a performance piece. Cue Art Foundation, 511 West 25th Street, Chelsea, [phone], cueartfoundation.org; closes on Saturday. (Cotter)

MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: 'MICHELANGELO, VASARI AND THEIR CONTEMPORARIES: DRAWINGS FROM THE UFFIZI' Michelangelo, with a couple of spectacular drawings, is the marquee name here, but many of the 16th-century Florentine artists he influenced fill the space, beginning with the extreme polymath Giorgio Vasari. A handful of drawings by Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino will knock your socks off, as will work by a few less familiar artists, all working to make the Medici rulers of Florence look good. 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street, (212) 685-0008590-0310, morganlibrary.org; closes on Sunday. (Cotter)IAN PEDIGO: 'TITANIUM PRO' Located at the overpopulated intersection of collage and assemblage -- and using a combination of magazine images, found paper, tape and cast-off domestic building materials -- this work avoids many of the current cliches. Everything is used sparely and with a geometric sense of structure; details stand out and include drawing, applications of color and little touches that may or may not be accidental. All is revealed. Thought and physical precision foment a kind of resurrection. Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery, 438 Union Avenue, near Devoe Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, [phone], klausgallery.com; closes on Sunday. (Smith)