En route to Michael Heizer’s City (1970–2022) in the Basin and Range National Monument in Nevada.This list is always difficult to write, but it was particularly hard this year. A sign of middle age–induced indecisiveness? Let’s hope not. It was, I think, just a very good year for art in New York, and other places I visited, which made it hard to cut the list down to only 10 entries. This was also my first full year back in New York after a few years in Seoul, and I remain awestruck by the sheer variety of offerings here. To repeat myself: There’s just no place like it. And so, before getting to the top 10, here is a rundown of some other highlights, in no real order. (It could easily have been twice as long.)
Simone Forti staged a moving show at Reena Spaulings. The peerless Yuji Agematsu had a captivating doubleheader at the Judd Foundation in SoHo and Gavin Brown’s Harlem space. The wild “R U STILL PAINTING??” filled a raw Midtown office space with painting (here’s my Times review), and the meticulous “Photos on Fridges” filled Harkawik with images, classic and obscure, all strong (I also reviewed it for the Times). Robert Grosvernor, one of our era’s greatest sculptors, did a final, beguiling exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery. RIP. Artists Space made the peerless Michael Asher sing (reviewed for Artnet). The scrappy Dakota space on the Bowery mounted a lively Josh Smith mini-survey. Camille Henrot was in excellent form at Hauser & Wirth, which also delivered a revelatory show of late Francis Picabia. Pace presented an Agnes Martin stunner, and Gagosian blessed us with a juicy Cy Twombly show, and a late Willem de Kooning survey (curated by Cecilia Alemani; here’s the Times review), and a slippery, confounding (mostly in a good way) Cady Noland show, and an outrageous Jeff Koons outing (reviewed in the Times). David Zwirner did a haunting Léon Spilliaert exhibition and a Joan Mitchell blockbuster. 52 Walker, still in a class all its own, mounted a string of classics: Julius Eastman and Glenn Ligon, Lotus L. Kang, EJ Hill, and Nicole Eisenman. And I almost forgot: Michael E. Smith hosted some exotic evenings at Giorno Poetry Systems.
An untitled sculpture from 2022 by B. Wurtz, on view in his solo show at the Garth Greenan Gallery.More: Faith Ringgold at Jack Shainman, Darren Bader at Matthew Brown, Keith Haring at Martos (up through January 15, unmissable) and Gladstone, Mathew Cerletty at Karma, Harriet Korman at Thomas Erben Gallery, Hiroka Yamashita (reviewed in the Times) at Kiang Malingue (welcome to town!), the multifarious activities of Smilers, Genevieve Goffman at Foreign & Domestic (with Alyssa Davis Gallery), John Marin at Schoelkopf Gallery, Nolan Simon at 47 Canal, John Zurier at Peter Blum, Ming Fay at Kurimanzutto (there ought to be a museum devoted to his hothouse fruits), Park Hyunki at Gallery Hyundai, Trisha Donnelly at the Drawing Center, Ho Tam at Carriage Trade (reviewed in the Times), Karen Kilimnik at Gladstone, and Sam McKinniss at Jeffrey Deitch. Cosey Fanni Tutti and “This Artwork Did Not Sell” at Essex Street, Alex Da Corte at the Matthew Marks Gallery, Ragnar Kjartansson at Luhring Augustine, Bill Hayden at Gandt, B. Wurtz (whom I profiled for T: The New York Times Style Magazine) at Garth Greenan, “The Making of Modern Korean Art” (buy the elegant, affecting book!) at Tina Kim Gallery, Urs Fischer at Salon 94 (reviewed in the Times), Alix Cléo Roubaud at Galerie Buchholz (ditto), Franz Kline at Mnuchin (RIP), Sanya Kantarovsky at Michael Werner, Marcel Duchamp and On Kawara at Turquoise (the latter in the Times), Alex Katz at Gladstone (same), Roe Ethridge at Andrew Kreps (and same), Tishan Hsu at Lisson (yes), Omari Douglin at Ramekin, and Hanna Hur and Dorothea Rockburne at Ulrik.
My focus here is mostly on galleries, but remarkable performances at New York museums included Wifredo Lam, Jack Whitten, and CAMP (which should have gotten three times as much space) at the Museum of Modern Art, Julien Ceccaldi, Whitney Claflin, Ayoung Kim, and Vaginal Davis (whoa!) at MoMA PS1 (it’s really cooking!), “High Wire: Calder’s Circus at 100” at the Whitney, and Man Ray and “Divine Egypt” at the Met.
The chestnut panettone at Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai. Heaven on a plate.Beyond the city’s bounds, I loved the Henri Rousseau retrospective at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia (and a rollicking meal at Royal Izakaya), the inventive pairings of Medardo Rosso and more contemporary figures at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Bárbara Sánchez-Kane’s takeover of the pugnacious new Cheruby House in Shanghai, and, also in Shanghai, Choe U-ram’s showcase of gimlet-eyed kinetic works at the Yuz Museum (disclosure: I spoke at a conference tied to the show). Also in Shanghai, two great painting affairs: Leidy Churchman at Antenna Space and Zhao Gang at Lisson. Finally, I was awed by the New Mexico Museum of Art’s celebration of the hometown hero Gustave Baumann, who seems to have been able to execute more good ideas than almost any other artist, ever.
The best artwork I saw for the first time this year? Michael Heizer’s City (1970–2022), but it’s not eligible since it didn’t debut in 2025. The best art-related food I ate? That's easy. It’s not even close. The chestnut panettone at Mi Shang Prada Rong Zhai, the Shanghai boîte designed by director Wong Kar-wai for the fashion giant’s cultural center in a 1918 mansion. Sizable, irresistible, and delicately flavored, it is profoundly rich, but it melts in the mouth. It must be had.
Performance still of Raven Chacon’s Tiguex (2025) at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque on September 27, 2005.
10. Raven Chacon’s Tiguex in Albuquerque
With Tiguex, a daylong performance in Albuquerque on September 27, Raven Chacon managed to make a work that was epic in scale and yet intimate in address. More than 200 musicians played 20 musical compositions of very different kinds in very different places, creating a kind of alternative history or map of the area. (The work’s title is the Tiwa name for the locale.) A trumpeter greeted sunup at Sandia Peak. Heavy metal drummers built a wave of sound at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. Guitarists strummed away atop a onetime department store. Like many audience members, I saw only a portion of it in person and caught other elements via social media. Still, the city felt alive, art marching forward, even as rain threatened, then came down. At one point, a mariachi band cruised by my rental car on the back of a flatbed truck, another of Chacon’s 20 movements. Like Tiguex itself, the sight was faintly surreal, deeply joyous, and sadly fleeting.
Installation view of the 15th Shanghai Biennial, “Does the Flower Hear the Bee?,” at the Power Station of Art, with Allora & Calzadilla’s Graft (Phantom Forest), 2025, on view.9. The 15th Shanghai Biennale, “Does the Flower Hear the Bee?”
The title of Kitty Scott’s winning Shanghai Biennale—“Does the Flower Hear the Bee?”—brought back memories of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev discussing the political intentions of strawberries. There are traces of Christov-Bakargiev’s freewheeling Documenta 13 (2012) in the show, but Scott’s affair is more traditional and restrained. No matter. It is elegant, moving, and truly grand in places. It positions artists as important thinkers, explorers, and actors out in the world, and often presents them documenting or interacting with other species or people. Beavers gnawed wood that Aki Inomata enlarged into sculptures. Cheng Xinhao filmed himself kicking a stone for hundreds of miles until it became a modest pebble. Heji Shin photographed fireflies mating in Mexico. Gordon Matta-Clark documented his extensive travels in photographs. I'll have more on this show soon. For now, I’ll just note that it’s up through March 31, and worth a visit if you’re going to be anywhere remotely near Shanghai before then.
Installation view of Laura Owens’s solo show at the Matthew Marks Gallery in New York.8. Laura Owens at the Matthew Marks Gallery
A feast of edifying enchantments in an awful year. Critic Martha Schwendener put it lucidly in the Times: “This show, with its extraordinary creative output, offers no escape but signals hope rather than defeat.” Over a half-dozen visits, I kept coming across more and more strange wonders: the pop-open miniature paintings, the mystery-filled desk, the hidden video room. With endless wit, and no small amount of hard work, Owens demonstrated the ability of art to act as a redoubt and a tool of revivification. At least one time before I die, I’d like to see the whole thing reassembled for another round of discovery.
The new Calder Gardens in Philadelphia, shortly before it opened.
7. Calder Gardens in Philadelphia
It can be difficult to get museum projects approved, funded, and finished in many parts of the United States, but for institutions in the extended New York area, it was a banner year for cultural construction. The new Princeton University Art Museum, designed by Adjaye Associates, is capacious, stately, and yet still approachable—a model university museum. The firm’s Studio Museum in Harlem feels awkward in places, but it still has some enlivening moments (that grand lobby, that glorious rooftop), and it’s a relief to have it back in action. Meanwhile, the Frick Collection returned in an expanded form, and in seamless high style, courtesy Selldorf Architects. Some mumble that the addition has the feel of a high-end spa, but it’s easy to imagine Henry Clay Frick enjoying it, and it leads to the museum’s excellent new restaurant, Westmoreland (which I wrote about for Artnet); it would be churlish to complain. My favorite of the bunch, though, was Herzog and de Meuron’s pleasingly odd, small but mighty Calder Gardens, which has an array of strong works loaned and marshaled by the Calder Foundation, from the famous to the obscure. (Here’s the review I wrote for the New York Times.) No trip to Philadelphia is complete without a visit.
Basel Social Club at the former Vontobel offices on June 17.6. Basel Social Club
Everyone is tired of art fairs, and yet the art fairs keep coming. Blessedly, alternatives have also proliferated, and they were strong this year. So, while it feels a little ridiculous to put a fair-adjacent project on this list, it must be done. The best I saw was Basel Social Club, which did a blowout edition, with some 90 galleries hanging work in the former offices of a private bank, where the delights included Walter Robinson’s paintings of money, courtesy Sébastien Bertrand, and an early Michel Majerus, via neugerriemschneider. The party in the courtyard the night I stopped by was glorious, too. Near the end of the year, during Art021 and West Bund Art and Design, Hang Over Shanghai posted up at the stately 1929 by Guillaume Galliot space with a taut nine galleries, including Layr (of Vienna) and P21 (Seoul). It felt like an expansive family reunion, far-flung relatives getting together for a nice time. And in New York, Stay Frosty went barebones, inviting exhibitors to stage productions in a Harlem parking lot. The results were pleasingly off the wall, but Greg Allen stole the show, selling copies of his Second Deposition of Richard Prince (2025) on a rug, channeling David Hammons’s Bliz-aard Ball Sale (1983). More of all of this, please. (Prince’s Deposition, by the way, was one of the year’s great artworks.)
Performance still of Anne Imhof’s DOOM: House of Hope (2025) at the Park Avenue Armory, March 4, 2025.5. “Anne Imhof: DOOM: House of Hope” at the Park Avenue Armory
Anne Imhof’s three-hour epic was perhaps the most divisive show of the year, but I loved it and wish it had been twice as long. As you may recall from Instagram, a large gang of attractive youths lounged, crawled, danced, spoke, and sang in a dark hall, amid (and on) Cadillac Escalades, as a Jumbotron counted down the time left in the performance. The slow-smoldering spectacle included live tattoos, and at one point, a charming little punk concert broke out. The project was sinister, alluring, and often quite languid, at different points very thrilling and very boring—a fitting encapsulation of right now.
Installation view of works by Gisèle Vienne (the standing sculptures) and Louise Lawler (the photo mural) in the 12th Site Santa Fe International, “Once Within a Time.”4. The 12th Site Santa Fe International, “Once Within a Time”
Just three years after curating her expansive Venice Biennale, Cecilia Alemani put together an edition of Site Santa Fe that is richly textured and tremendous fun. (How often can you say that about one of these big surveys?) Featuring more than 90 participants across more than a dozen venues (including a cannabis dispensary, commandeered by Omari Douglin), it engages many threads of the area’s history while still feeling bracingly current. Historical treasures abound, like butterfly studies that Vladimir Nabokov made in the region and a map annotated by Willa Cather when she was writing Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927). Standout contemporary contributions come from Korakrit Arunanondchai, Zhang Xu Zhan, and many more. The show made me want to live in Santa Fe, or at least vacation there regularly. It’s up through January 12, and I wish I had time for a return trip.
Suzanne Duchamp’s La Noce (The Wedding), 1924, in “Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective” at the Kunsthaus Zurich.3. “Suzanne Duchamp: Retrospective” at the Kunsthaus Zurich
Finally, the least known of the four Duchamp-family artists received a proper retrospective. Suzanne Duchamp, who lived from 1889 to 1963, “does more intelligent things than paint,” her compatriot Francis Picabia said, but she had real panache with a brush, darting breezily from Cubism, to Dadaism, to an eccentric figurative style that seems to presage the “Bad” Painting of the 1970s. (For more, here’s my Artnet review.) Regrettably, Duchamp left behind few statements about her work, so this retrospective uncorked revelations even as it deepened mysteries that seem likely to endure. It is currently on view at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt through January 11. Book a ticket to Germany. You deserve it.
Still of Mark Leckey’s 2021 video installation To the Old World (Thank You for the Use of Your Body) in “3 Songs from the Liver” at Gladstone Gallery, New York.2. “Mark Leckey: 3 Songs from the Liver” at Gladstone Gallery
For the first time in eight years (remember that captivating MoMA PS1 show?), Mark Leckey touched down in New York with a solo exhibition and delivered his latest outré inventions, which make a lot of other contemporary art feel low stakes, quaint. His subjects and raw materials included an alarming viral video, a bus stop, and medieval paintings and architecture, which he transmuted into portals to various forms of transcendence, whether from excellent music, a life-altering walk, or time spent with family. I tried to encapsulate its heady pleasures in the Times.
Installation view of “Jordan Wolfson: Little Room” at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland.1. “Jordan Wolfson: Little Room” at the Foundation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland
Jordan Wolfson's body-swapping VR experience feels at once like a thorny philosophical exercise, a dark sci-fi experiment, and a technological black hole. As I wrote for Artnet, it was a relief to take off the headset after spending 10 or so minutes in its virtual environment (it felt longer), but I’d like to do it again soon. (What would happen to people who did it every day, I wonder?) A singular creation, it seems destined to become one of the the most ambitious and unnerving cul-de-sacs in recent art history or the start of something terrible and new.
