It’s springtime, and artnet Auctions are heating up with a new Prints Masterworks sale, more than 200 lots estimated at a total value of $2.5 million-$3.5 million.

Among the spicier items are a rare 1980s work by Marilyn Minter, a close-up of a woman licking her lips, hand-colored with lipstick and affordably priced (est. $1,500-$2,000), and a hot pink Andy Warhol Marilyn Announcement, signed by the artist, from a 1981 show at Leo Castelli Gallery (est. $15,000-$20,000).

Pop Art is on the front burner, too, with Ed Ruscha’s Mocha Standard (1969), a golden-brown-toned version of his celebrated gas station (est. $45,000-$55,000), and Dennis Hopper’s 1964 silkscreen of a grid of portraits of Andy Warhol, used that year for the cover of Artforum (est. $70,000-$90,000).

Also notable are Joan Miró’s majestic and mysterious Equinoxe (1967), one of his most famous prints (est. $60,000-$80,000).

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The next big art fair on the horizon is Art Chicago 2010, which opens April 30-May 3, 2010, and takes place simultaneously with Next, which specializes in new art, and the Merchandise Mart International Antiques Fair. Participants in the newly energized Art Chicago include Mark Borghi Fine Art, Hammer Galleries, Haunch of Venison, Hirschl & Adler Modern, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Paul Thiebaud Gallery and White Cube. Also adding to the excitement are on-site exhibitions, including "Partisan," a show of political art, and "New Insight," featuring artists from MFA programs across the country. The preview gala on Apr. 29 benefits the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

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Back in New York City, the 2010 Armory Show and all the satellite art fairs may have left town, but the balmy spring weather is bringing all you hibernating bears out of your caves to visit the many new shows at local galleries.

Start your tour over in Chelsea, where David Zwirner unveils the first New York solo exhibition by South African expressionist Marlene Dumas since 2001, called "Against the Wall" and featuring all new paintings.

An expressionist of the Leipzig School sort may be found at Robert Goff Gallery, which is featuring the brilliantly eccentric interpenetrated landscapes of the German colorist Susanne Kühn.

Abstract painting can be found in the neighborhood as well, including the curiously inventive works of Charline von Heyl at Friedrich Petzel Gallery and the explorations of hard-edge color and deductive shape by Warren Isensee at Danese Gallery.

At Paula Cooper Gallery on West 23rd Street are the earthy monochromes of ecological minimalist Meg Webster, who coats sheets of paper with everything from cinnamon and chocolate to cement. Webster is crafting a garden of boulders and plants for the Hudson River Park, due to be unveiled later this spring.

In its West 21st Street space, Cooper Gallery boasts artist Sam Durant, who presents "Dead Labor Day" -- citing the Marxist notion of surplus value as "dead labor" -- via a monumental sculpture inspired by the gallows made to hang the Haymarket Martyrs in 1887.

And at Gladstone Gallery on West 24th Street is Catherine Opie’s much-anticipated show of new and previously unexhibited photographs, titled "Girlfriends" and exploring "the nature of butch-dyke identity."

Around the corner at PaceWildenstein’s West 25th Street gallery is "Joseph Beuys: Make the Secrets Productive," which includes several large works as well as 90 photos by Ute Klophaus of Beuys actions from 1965-68, and four films of early performances, including the legendary I Like America and America Likes Me (1976), documenting Beuys’ visit to Rene Block Gallery in SoHo, where he co-habited with a coyote.

A bit off the beaten track at the Gary Snyder Project Space at West 26th Street and 7th Avenue are the suave monochromes of thick, textured acrylic by artist John Griefen, who lives in Northern France and has shown in New York City since the 1960s at Kornblee, Salander-O’Reilly and elsewhere.

"Josef Albers: Formulation: Articulation, 1972," a suite of 127 silkscreen plates published in 1976 -- when the artist was in his 80s and summing up four decades of investigations into color, perception and abstraction -- is at Peter Blum at 99 Wooster Street in SoHo.

Over on the Lower East Side is Blackston, recently opened at 29C Ludlow Street, which is featuring new work by 2008 Parsons MFA Julia Dault, whose large but ephemeral sculptures, made of little more than large sheets of mylar and other such materials, are described as "performed Minimalism."

And for the truly adventurous -- or perhaps those with an errand at J&R Records -- a visit to Rose Burlingham Livingroom Gallery at 15 Park Row in Lower Manhattan is rewarded by Eva Faye’s show of subtly inflected "Transparent Drawings."

In midtown, the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery on West 57th Street is presenting "Unconscious Unbound: Surrealism in America," a not-to-be-missed survey of works by 32 artists spanning 1931 to 1952, including William Baziotes, Federico Castellon and Willem de Kooning to Alfonso Ossorio, Jackson Pollock, Dorothea Tanning and Pavel Tchelitchew.

On the way uptown, swing east to stop at Davis & Langdale Company at 231 East 60th to catch the show of 40 works, 35 new to the public, by Robert Kulicke (1924-2007), the celebrated frame-maker, whose own paintings are exquisitely done still lifes of single objects.

Up on East 79th Street, the offerings include a new selection of "nightscapes" -- including luminous paintings of spotlighted liquor bottles on bar shelves -- by artist Dan Witz at DFN Gallery, now at 74 East 79th Street.

A little closer to Central Park, Acquavella Galleries has just closed "James Rosenquist: The Hole in the Middle of Time and The Hole in the Wallpaper," a show including 14 rotating paintings, each with a circular mirror in its center. Now that’s an art lovers’ delirium.