The Big Ten

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It’s the end of the year. Time for ten best-ness, meaning Time‘s great end of the year tradition — I think this is the second year I’ve done it — of naming the ten best American museum shows of 2008.

But first some explanation about how I arrived at the Big Ten. The most obvious rule — it had to be a show I actually saw. If you read this blog regularly, you know I travel quite a bit, so the list includes exhibitions from all around the country. All the same, it isn’t possible for anybody to catch every exhibition at every museum in every city. Inevitably there are some big ones I don’t get out to.

To cite one obvious example, the Jeff Koons retrospective that was up all summer at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. I’m not one of his biggest fans, an impression confirmed for me once again by the sizable selection of his work at the Broad Contemporary at the Los Angeles County Museum, which I did see. But a couple of times over the last year I was mesmerized by some of his giant stainless steel sculptures. The big Balloon Dog (Yellow) that was on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum in New York this summer was fascinating. Likewise the cracked egg that was displayed to perfection under a dome of the Royal Academy in London at the RA’s annual group show last fall. Would the Chicago show have impressed me the same way? We’ll never know. Like the song says, regrets, I have a few.

Then there’s the rankings. With the exception of the number one choice — the longterm installation of Sol LeWitt wall drawings at MASS MoCA — the shows are simply listed in the order of their opening dates at their first U.S. venue. Courbet at the Met — number two on the list — wasn’t infinitely better than Tara Donovan in Boston — number nine. It just opened earlier.

And speaking of U.S. venues, the list only includes shows that opened in the U.S. this year. The wonderful Louise Bourgeois retrospective — number six on the list — actually premiered in London in 2007, which is when I first saw it, but for the purposes of the U.S. I’m treating it as a 2008 show because it had its first American venue this year at the Guggenheim. Same for the Henry Moore show — number five — which I first saw at Kew outside London last year but which only got to the New York Botanical Garden this year. Meanwhile, two of the best exhibitions I saw anywhere in 2008 were the Francis Bacon retrospective in London and Late Titian in Venice but neither of them got to this side of the Atlantic this year. I’m sure the Bacon show, which comes to New York next spring, will be on the list for 2009.

And lastly, like any ten best list, this isn’t an exhaustive account of shows I loved this year. It’s just an attempt to arrive at ten. What got left on the cutting room floor? The great survey of Philip Guston drawings at the Morgan Museum & Library, which has stayed with me all year. And I’ve been fascinated by “Joan Miro: Painting and Anti-Painting: 1927-37”, which is still up at MoMA. Likewise the exhibition of ancient Assyrian art borrowed from the British Museum that’s up right now at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

I could go on. And no doubt, next year, I will.