Marden   (Photo: © 2006 Brice Marden/ARS/Courtesy of MoMA)

Honorable Mentions
The Guggenheim found its niche with big international surveys. The Whitney grabbed the High Line site abandoned by Dia, thrilling uptown preservationists and downtown art aficionados alike. The Armory Show—still not as hip as Frieze or Art Basel Miami—at least got smaller, and therefore easier to navigate. New York museums finally delivered a major Eva Hesse exhibition—two of them, in fact, at the Jewish Museum and the Drawing Center. Triple Candie’s appropriated exhibits of appropriation art drew new audiences to Harlem. Renzo Piano made new sense of the Morgan Library & Museum, reorganizing what had been a jumbled-up treasure chest. Young Chinese artists took Chelsea by storm. At the new MoMA, the sixth-floor special-exhibition galleries worked out well (as the current Brice Marden show demonstrates).

Larner   (Photo: Liz Larner/Regen Projects/Courtesy of the Whitney Museum)

New York celebrated Los Angeles as a viable—and vital—art center. Recent success stories: abstractionists Mark Grotjahn and Mark Bradford, sculptors Evan Holloway and Liz Larner. Museums discovered podcasting (notably the Met, which had Johnny Rotten narrate “AngloMania”). YouTube gave video auteurs a new platform. Next up: the site’s future first art star. Battle of the megadealers: David Zwirner gave Larry Gagosian a run for his money by tripling his 19th Street space; Gagosian opened his second Chelsea gallery. The Lower East Side gallery scene came into its own—again—preparing for the arrival of the New Museum. A trio of curators received deserved recognition: Donna De Salvo (for the Whitney’s greatest-hits show) and Leah Dickerman and Anne Umland (for “Dada”). The expansion of the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries, which will reopen next year, looks sensational. The number of galleries in Chelsea topped 300.