2007 in Review: My Exhibitions of the Year

NEW YORK—Yes, that’s right. I’m not claiming that these are THE exhibitions of the year, or even ARTINFO’s exhibitions of the year. What we have here is a list of exhibitions that one individual, who happens to be me, regards as the best he’s visited this year.

I probably get to spend as much time looking at art as anyone else on the planet, and for that I am enormously grateful. But nobody gets to see everything. I live in New York City, and rather shamefully I don’t tend to leave town much unless I’m assigned to cover the major art fairs. Still, I’ve seen some remarkable art in the past 12 months, and I’d say that these are the best of the lot. I’ve even put them in order.

1. Robert Gober: Work 1976–2007, Schaulager, Basel

I’m not sure I would have gone to see this show if I hadn’t been covering it for ARTINFO; now that I’ve seen it, I know for certain I never really "got" Gober before. Like most people, I imagine, I knew him best from his individual sculptures: those wan, hairy legs sticking out of walls and those curious handcrafted sinks. Seeing this show, I realized that these aren’t really his forte. They are more like miniatures that hint at the genuine rapture his larger installations bring about. I reviewed this show in June, when I was in Basel to the cover the art fair. What I didn’t mention at the time was that the show may have generated the catalog of the year—a fantastic catalogue raisonné of Gober’s sculptures and installations from 1979 to 2007.

2. Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: The Killing Machine and Other Stories, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Mathildenhohe Darmstadt; Miami Art Museum

Whereas the Gober show was a wonderful discovery, this Cardiff-Miller exhibition was the fulfillment of long anticipation. I’ve followed their work for years, and a few months ago I wrote about them in an AI Interview [click here for a related video]. The wonderful thing about their work is that, even though it all has to do with the imaginary, you have to experience it physically to appreciate its special magic. So works I’d seen before—like the little cinema that is Paradise Institute (2001)—were as powerfully transporting as Opera for a Small Room (2006) and other works I experienced in Miami for the first time. This show was the highlight of this year’s Miami trip by a wide, wide margin.

3. The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend, The Jewish Museum, New York

Here’s another show that I’d been waiting for someone to do for a long time. I used to live next door to La Nevelson back in the ’70s, and it was a real treat to see environmental pieces that she built in her apartment-studio on Spring Street, such as Mrs. N’s Palace (1964–1977), shown in the context of her development out of a particularly New York type of surrealism. The show also did a good job explaining her conscious development of a somewhat alarming public persona. I originally discussed the show (and my next pick) here.

4. Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years, Museum of Modern Art, New York

This is a show that really split opinion. To say that Serra’s architectural-scale works are “uncompromising” is as much an understatement as calling them “monumental.” Some folks complained about his machismo, others said that they found the maze-like installation on MoMA’s second floor exhausting—but I have to say I was utterly transfixed. Nobody else is making successful sculpture on this enormous scale, nor has anyone in the past, and the surprise is how welcoming and intimate it turns out to be. Having already visited this show several times, I actually canceled all of my plans for its final day so that I could see it one last time. Click here to read my AI Interview with Serra and here to see two of his giant works being installed in the MoMA sculpture garden.

5. Martin Puryear, Museum of Modern Art, New York

Here’s another MoMA show, another sculpture retrospective, and another artist who found his identity in the fallout of Minimalism, but it was the differences between this and the Serra exhibition that made me realize the enormous vitality of sculpture in the early 21st century. Puryear proves himself here a magician of forms that sit happily at the intersection of abstraction and representation and a poet of implied and suggested appearances and meanings. Each piece in this show (which I originally discussed here) reflects aspects of its maker’s character as well as its own rounded personality. Of all my choices, this is the only one still on view, through January 14. If you haven’t seen it, go now.

Click on the photo gallery above for images from each of these five shows.