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GEORGES BRAQUE—Associated American Artists, 605 Fifth Ave. at 49th. A first U.S. showing of 22 color prints done for French Poet Rene Char's Letter a Amoroso, the last lithographs Braque made, signed by him last July shortly before his death. Through May 16.
MUSEUMS
JEWISH—Fifth Ave. at 92nd. Fifty drawings of Arshile Gorky span his career from the early portraits, through an esthetic pilgrimage that visited Cezanne, Picasso, Miro and others, to the time when his imagination was ripe and he became in turn an influence on other artists. Through June 30.
GUGGENHEIM— Fifth Ave. at 89th. The cities in which Van Gogh lived are landmarks in his style. His nephew's collection (120 works) offers a unique opportunity to follow the painter's path. Leaving the bleak peasantry of Nuenen (The Potato Eaters) for Antwerp and Paris, his palette brightens. When he reaches Aries in the south of France it bursts into the brilliant light of high noon (Sunflowers, The Harvest, his own Yellow House). Van Gogh spent the last two months of his life at Auvers-sur-Oise, there painted skies deepening with twilight. Through June 28.
METROPOLITAN—Fifth Ave. at 82nd. A two-sided Raphael drawing believed lost for nearly 100 years and purchased by the Met for $89,600 highlights a small show of recent acquisitions (through May 30). In the 18th century, Josiah Wedgwood revolutionized the potter's art with creamy earthenware that he made for shopkeepers as well as royalty; 250 pieces, the first exhibition of its kind, include the humbler versions and some made for Catherine the Great. Through Sept. 27.
FRICK COLLECTION—Fifth Ave. at 70th.
Especially appealing: William Blake's watercolors (through May 24), Houdon's perfectly balanced terra-cotta sculpture of Diana the Huntress, Bellini's St. Francis in Ecstasy, Holbein's Sir Thomas More, La Tour's Education oj the Virgin, Fragonard's series of canvases representing "The Progress of Love," commissioned and rejected by Madame Du Barry.
GALLERY OF MODERN ART—Columbus Cir cle at 59th. A mammoth exhibition of the late Russian-born painter, Pavel Tchelit-chew (through May 24); a comprehensive survey of Pre-Raphaelite painting that includes Founders William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti; also, a 50-work showing of French Sculptor Antoine Bourdelle who, before his death in 1929, did 21 agonized studies of Beethoven, some of them on view. Both through May 31.
BROOKLYN—Eastern Parkway. Watercolor was the first medium that Joseph Mal-lord William Turner attempted and he continued in it long after he became England's great romantic painter. This major exhibition of his watercolors, lent by the British Museum, embraces his genius from the disciplined draftsmanship of his student days (the earliest was drawn at 14) to later seascapes so impressionistic in color and spare of design as to border on the abstract. Through May 31.