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Ambition abounded among museums

2011: The year in visual arts

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

December 25, 2011|By Sebastian Smee

One of the galleries in the Museum of Fine Arts new Linde Family Wing for Contemporary… (David L Ryan / Globe Staff )

2011 was an incredibly lively year for art in New England. Across the board, the region’s museums seemed to vault ahead in confidence and maturity, displaying new levels of energy and ambition.

Things have been heading in this direction for several years. But suddenly, and thanks largely to new energies funneled into the field of contemporary art, artistic offerings no longer seemed stolid in some departments, threadbare in others.

Instead, art lovers were treated to the full gamut: smart, convincing, and beautiful exhibitions that ranged from ancient art (the Museum of Fine Arts’s unapologetically lust-inducing “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love’’) through Old Masters (the Peabody Essex Museum’s exquisite display of Dutch and Flemish pictures from the van Otterloo collection), Impressionism (“Degas and the Nude’’ at the MFA and “Pissarro’s People’’ at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute), modern (Ellsworth Kelly’s wood sculptures at the MFA, “Edward Hopper’s Maine’’ at Bowdoin College Museum of Art), and contemporary - of which more in a moment.

If you liked art, in other words, you weren’t going to go hungry. And let’s not forget the memorable offerings in the categories of fashion and design (“Cocktail Culture’’ at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design; a new gallery for jewels and gems at the MFA), and illustration (an enthralling Edward Gorey exhibit at the Boston Athenaeum, and R. Crumb’s illustrated book of Genesis at Bowdoin).

In a category all its own - or more accurately, in a concerted attempt at blowing away categories of any kind - was “Tangible Things’’ at Harvard University. This physically small but intellectually overflowing exhibit brought together miscellaneous objects - a giant tapeworm, Thoreau’s pencil, Sargent’s paint-spattered palette - from some of the university’s more than 50 unique collections, inviting viewers to make of them what they would. The results were startling, and a great instance of lateral thinking and institutional risk-taking paying off.

Undoubtedly, though, the big story of the year was the opening of the Linde Family Wing for Contemporary Art at the MFA. That event more or less coincided with the Institute of Contemporary Art marking its 75th anniversary with a slew of exhibitions, programs, and parties. It was all good fodder for the argument that contemporary art is flourishing in New England’s museums as never before.