Detail from “Night Landscape is Often Obscured by Other Things,” by Margaret Boozer. Courtesy Project 4 Gallery.

Looks like everyone is gearing up this weekend to open one last show for 2008, and there is so much good stuff, we’re not sure how we’re going to get to it all. Be sure to go below the fold to find this weekends’ holiday art markets around town.

But first, a little interactivity. You know those old tennis, bowling, or chess trophies collecting dust in your mom’s basement? Dig them out and bring them to the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Artist Jean Shin is collecing them for a new piece called Everyday Monuments, which will be on display at SAAM starting May 1. You know you always thought your runner-up trophy for basketweaving deserved to be in the Smithsonian. Drop them off in the Luce Center (3rd floor) by Saturday.

Thursday:
>> One of our favorite local artists, Margaret Boozer, opens a new show at Project 4 tonight. Her stellar clay work “crosses genres between representation and abstraction, painting and sculpture.” Reception 6 to 8:30 p.m.

>> Head over to the Phillips Collection to see a screening and curator’s talk for When Absence Becomes Presence, the first round in the Washington Project for the Arts’ Experimental Media Series. Check out our preview here and get there by 6 p.m.

>> Strange Bodies: Figurative Works from the Hirshhorn Collection begins at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden today. This large exhibit of over 40 works (which will rotate out halfway through the run) travels the recent history of the human form in art. See the bold paintings of Francis Bacon, the giant, fleshy sculptures of Ron Mueck, the mythological human-hybrids of Matthew Barney, and more. Open daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.