GALLERIES

The ads in the back pages of national-circulation magazines are starting to push "Boston--this summer! The Bicentennial City! Where it all began!". I remember my shock my first Patriot's Day when a man in knee-breeches and a tricornered hat almost ran me over as he urged his galioping steed down Garden St And that was nothing compared to this year--as the Boston area museums are all too happily reminding us this week.

The Fogg is honoring Benjamin Franklin, who actually came from Philadelphia. The exhibit opened Wednesday, is going to run all summer, and is supposed to feature Franklin's "contributions to Harvard." It does seem interesting that the man who wrote that blasphemous little ditty "Early to bed, Early to rise, etc." should be honored at the one major university which offers no 8 a.m. classes. The key from the famous kite experiment isn't there, either. The Fogg has new hours these days--it opens at 9 now instead of 10 (more the influence of the unions than Franklin, though.)

Not to be outdone, the Museum of Fine Arts, when it isn't looking for missing paintings, is opening tomorrow a show on Paul Revere's Boston. The MFA has one of the finest collections of early American furniture and silver in the world, so the show should be pretty special. My sources in the Museum tell me that the MFA is pushing the Bicentennial big this year, because in 1976 most of their early American collection is going to be on loan to other museums for their bicentennial shows.

But I still think the best thing to come out of all this bicentennial nonsense is the report in a recent Art News that the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington (the one Dolly Madison rescued from the British in 1812, now hanging in the East Room of the White House) is probably a fake.

Also of interest: Quilts by Radka Connell, Susan Hoffman and Holly Upton at Carpenter Center, through April 27. And an exhibit of science fiction art and writing, sponsored by the New England Science Fiction Association, at the Prudential Center through April 25.