(already subscribe? log in).

Ambition abounded among museums

2011: The year in visual arts

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

December 25, 2011|By Sebastian Smee

(Page 4 of 4)

Meanwhile, Jim Welu, since 1986 the beloved director of Worcester Art Museum, has retired. Born and raised in Dubuque, Iowa, he started as an assistant curator at the museum way back in 1974. He has been replaced by Matthias Waschek, who was director of academic programs at the Louvre and, most recently, director of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis.

SEBASTIAN SMEE’S PICKS

■BEST SHOW “Degas and the Nude,’’ Museum of Fine Arts

■BEST CONTEMPORARY SHOW “Dance/Draw,’’ Institute of Contemporary Art

■BEST OLD MASTERS SHOW “Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks From the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection,’’ Peabody Essex Museum, Salem

■TRIPPIEST SHOW Otto Piene’s “Lichtballet,’’ List Visual Arts Center

■HOTTEST ARTIST HEREABOUTS El Anatsui. The Nigerian artist’s work was displayed everywhere from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute to the Davis Museum at Wellesley College and the Museum of Fine Arts.

■MOST AMBITIOUS SINGLE SHOW Katharina Grosse’s “One Floor Up More Highly,’’ Mass MoCA, North Adams

■BEST PHILOSOPHICAL TICKLE “Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life,’’ Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, N.H.

■BIGGEST CHORUS OF CHEERS FOR “Art at the Origin: The Early Sixties,’’ Rose Art Museum, Waltham

■BIGGEST DISCOVERY Edward Hopper’s early Maine seascapes in “Edward Hopper’s Maine,’’ Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine.

■FAVORITE SINGLE WORK Bruce Conner’s “EVE-RAY-FOREVER,’’ Rose Art Museum, Waltham