The Best Art of 2016

The art critics of The New York Times — Holland Cotter and Roberta Smith — share their picks for the best art of the year.

Featured on nytimes.com

Holland Cotter

“Despite Fear and Uncertainty, Parts of Art Market May Benefit From a Trump Presidency, Insiders Say.” This bit of speculative reassurance, delivered by ARTnews magazine on Nov. 9, gave a good sense of where the soul of the mainstream art world — and there are many other art worlds — lies: in business as usual. Sell. Buy. Art Basel Miami Beach.

Can there be business as usual in the climate of racism, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia that the election exposed and fostered? Has an economic and ethical line been drawn in the sand between the art market, with its appetite for eye-candy, and alternative factions and modes of production, in whatever forms they may take? Time will tell.

Most of the 2016 art season predated the election but can’t help but be viewed, retrospectively, in its light. Meretricious events now look doubly so. Some of the stronger ones look more timely than ever. Here are some that struck me as strong:

1. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION The inauguration in September of this museum, after decades of dogged, frustrated effort by advocates, was the cultural event of the year. Built on the National Mall, within striking distance of the White House, it arrived at just the right moment: at the start of a new civil rights movement.

2. ‘KERRY JAMES MARSHALL: MASTRY’ One of our greatest contemporary history painters, Mr. Marshall gives imaginative form to much of the narrative the new Washington museum documents. He’s also a fabulous formal technician. He finesses the old question of whether political art can be beautiful. (At the Met Breuer through Jan. 29.)

3. ‘THE ART OF THE QUR’AN: TREASURES FROM THE MUSEUM OF TURKISH AND ISLAM ARTS’ In an exceptional year for art in Washington, this survey of hand-copied Qurans at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is a standout. Most of the books are on loan from Istanbul; some are as small as cellphones, others the size of doors. All are exquisite products of a religion now under threat in the United States. (Through Feb. 20.)

4. ‘JERUSALEM 1000-1400: EVERY PEOPLE UNDER HEAVEN’The financially pressed Metropolitan Museum came through with two classic historical spectacles this year, the other being the astonishing “Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World.” The power of multiculturalism was the bottom-line theme in both shows. “Jerusalem”we see as a lived reality in gorgeous, centuries-old examples of Christian, Islamic and Jewish art. (Through Jan. 8.)

5. ‘PAINT THE REVOLUTION: MEXICAN MODERNISM, 1910-1950’ This fascinating historical survey is filled with polemical art of the highest, and sometimes subtlest, order. And it usefully suggests some of the problems built into aestheticizing ideology. There are some fantastic artists here, but there are no saints. (Through Jan. 8.)

6. ‘MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES: MAINTENANCE ART’ “After the revolution, who’s going to pick up the garbage on Monday morning?” That’s what Ms. Ukeles asked herself in the 1960s, when, fed up with an art world that put painting on a pedestal and shut women out, she began making art from stuff that most people threw away. She is now into her fourth decade as honorary artist in residence with New York Department of Sanitation. Her retrospective at the Queens Museum is a tribute to a career that has consistently looked at what’s overlooked, including the environmental crisis. So there are saints after all. (Through Feb. 19.)

7. ‘A FEAST OF ASTONISHMENTS: CHARLOTTE MOORMAN AND THE AVANT-GARDE, 1960S-1980S’ Many of the year’s best shows were of art by women, including this one devoted to Charlotte Moorman (1933-1991) at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery. Moorman was tagged as the “topless cellist” but far beyond being a novelty act, she was an artist of wit and anarchic invention, and the inventor of the Annual Avant Garde Festival of New York, an anti-Art Basel if ever there was one.

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