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THURSDAY

Reluctantly chuck those show bills and music posters because someone convinced you they were “college stuff”? Turn off Trading Spaces, step away from the Crate & Barrel catalog, and head down to Transformer for a reminder that you needn’t be a slave to your IKEA color scheme. Guest curator Nick Pimentel has assembled “Gleaming the Screen,” a group exhibition of silkscreened music-poster art, featuring work by more than 20 innovators in the field from the United States and Canada. The smooth, flat stuff incorporates bold color and strong lines with typesetting, drawings, found images, and computer graphics, capturing not only the musical spirit of bands such as Songs: Ohia and Le Tigre but also the aesthetic spirit of the new aughts. The results are part polyphony, part zeitgeist, part promotion, and wholly original—qualities that the best music posters have always shared, from the Grateful Dead’s to the Dead Kennedys’ to Death Cab for Cutie’s. Grab your wallet and start rebuilding your collection from 3 to 8 p.m. (see City List for other dates; show runs to Saturday, March 6) at Transformer, 1404 P St. NW. Free. (202) 483-1102. (AM)