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CURT VALENTIN MEMORIAL—Marlborough-Gerson, 41 East 57th. After a record crowd at the opening of the world's largest commercial art gallery, the proprietors throw a mammoth show of more than 300 paintings and sculptures by artists once associated with the late New York Art Dealer Curt Valentin. Among them are Henry Moore, Jean Arp, Jacques Lipchitz, Marino Marini, Alexander Calder, Graham Sutherland, Paul Klee, and a covey of other imports ranging from Rodin to Picasso.
Through Dec. 21.
IQBAL GEOFFREY—Grand Central Moderns, 8 West 56th. New York debut of a 24-year-old Pakistani who chucked a promising career in law to paint. Geoffrey's richly textured, calligraphic "fusions" suggest affinities between Oriental technique and action painting. Through Dec. 31.
LEONID—Durlacher, 538 Madison Ave.
at 54th. Thirty recent, pretty and repetitious shorescapes gleaned from world travels through poverty-stricken countries indicate that the aging neoromantic filters what he sees. Through Dec. 21.
MUSEUMS
MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK—Fifth Ave. at 103rd. John Koch's sleek snapshots of life seem to have been done on fast emulsion instead of canvas. His world, seen in 51 paintings, has an eat-off -the-floor spotlessness, his people an ad-agency folksiness. Through Jan. 1. On view at Kraushaar Galleries, 1055 Madison Ave. at 80th: 30 of Koch's pencil figure studies. Through Dec. 21.
GUGGENHEIM—Fifth Ave. at 89th. Francis Bacon's tragic views of humans great and lowly, plus his visceral Three Studies for a Crucifixion. Through Jan. 12. Also on view: 20th century drawings by such masters as Munch, Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, De Kooning, Motherwell, Tobey and others. Through Jan. 5.
NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY—170 Central Park West at 77th. U.S. Naturalist John James Audubon's dew-bright, exquisitely squawking original watercolors of the birds of America drawn for his famed Elephant Folio, rotated to put on view all 432 in the collection. Permanent.
MUSEUM OF PRIMITIVE ART—15 West 54th. A comprehensive show of the art of the Peruvian Inca empire includes 150 objects of gold, silver, wood, stone, textiles and feathers, among them a 7-in. silver figurine of an Incan beauty bedecked in woolen mantles and a red feather headdress. Through Feb. 2.
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS—29 West 53rd. Toy Sculptor William Accorsi takes a mesh purse, a letter opener, a pair of earrings, some bits of glass and solders them into a seated king in chain mail; his motorized Tournament of Saints utilizes Erector-set parts, springs, spools, wire, scraps of wood and tin. Also on view:
ceramics. by Gertrud and Otto Natzler, and a collection of furniture, fabrics, pottery, enamels and metalware by 263 Eastern U.S. craftsmen. Through Jan. 5.