October 15, 2008 
On the Horizon: Our Top 10 List for 2007By William Hanley
Published: January 3, 2007
Even ignoring the Art Basel, Documenta 12, Venice Biennale trifecta coming up in Europe this June—and limiting my scope to museum and gallery exhibitions in New York (home of ArtInfo’s headquarters)—it promises to be a busy year. The new New Museum of Contemporary art is slated to open in 2007, both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum are completing new galleries, and Chelsea continues to propagate (for instance, the Yvon Lambert Web site is counting down the milliseconds until the opening of its new space on 21st Street). Some of the shows on my admittedly scattershot list promise to be among the year’s most memorable, or at least most discussed, while others simply sparked my curiosity. Will any of them be among 2007’s best? I’m not going to venture a guess, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
1. “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years” — The Museum of Modern Art Back when the new Museum of Modern Art was still in the planning stages, its reinforced floors were specifically designed with these works in mind. And with Richard Serra’s 80-ton sculptures, the museum may have finally found work that can contend with the scale of its colossal atrium. Whether the comprehensive trip through Serra’s 40-year career, including three new works made for the exhibition, is a triumph or a snore will have little impact on opinions about the artist, but it could elicit final verdicts on the new building—at least, until the next big expansion announcement.
2. “Lawrence Weiner” — Whitney Museum of American Art For a few days in June, anyone looking for a double feature of architecture-influenced work can catch MoMA’s Serra show appearing back-to-back with “Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are The Measure” at the Whitney (Feb 22-Jun 7), but, later in the year, that museum also gives retrospective treatment to Lawrence Weiner’s comparatively less tangible output. Not only will it be interesting to follow changes in Weiner’s work throughout his career—even as his strategy has remained relatively consistent since the 1960s—it will be equally fun to see how the museum handles the exhibition design for so many text-based pieces.
3. “High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975” — National Academy Museum While some of 2007’s big retrospective names got their start in an era that was indifferent to—if not hostile toward—traditional painting, the touring exhibition “High Times, Hard Times” promises a rare and much anticipated chronological look at the “death,” exuberant afterlife and resurrection of painting with work by a long, wide-ranging list of artists: Mary Corse, Al Loving, Ree Morton, Blinky Palermo, Dorothea Rockburne, Richard Tuttle, and more…
4. “Impressed by Light: Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1960” — The Metropolitan Museum of Art It definitely won’t be the most high-profile show the Met does all year (leave that to Frank Stella or the Clark brothers), but this exhibition of calotypes (photographs printed from paper negatives) is worth singling out because it centers on the medium’s first format debate fueled by emerging technology. Even after glass negatives became the commercial standard around 1851, some photographers preferred to continue working with paper for reasons that presage contemporary film vs. digital arguments.
5. “Anthony McCall: New Work” — Sean Kelly Gallery Ever since Anthony McCall returned to the art world after a 20-year hiatus, his experiments with the film projector’s ability to define space have continued to surprise. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing his most recent perception-shifting blend of cinema and sculpture.
6. “Networked Nature” — Foxy Production |
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