1. Vermeer
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; February
Show of the year, if not the decade: 28 of the 37 known works spotlit in a sequence of darkened chambers, some of them beautifully solo, this was the chance of a lifetime to see Vermeer’s mind laid out in his painting. Exhilarating and revelatory, especially about the spiritual versus secular mysteries of his art. And beautifully filmed, in perpetuity, for the Rijksmuseum website.
2. Philip Guston
Tate Modern, London; October (runs until 25 February)
Tragicomic, wild, ceaselessly inventive: a stupendous anthology of paintings by the New York-based artist, running all the way from his rueful, smoking-eating-drinking self-portraits to the mordantly political near-cartoons. Unmissable.
3. Donatello: Sculpting the Renaissance
V&A, London; February
First ever British show of this Florentine master revealed him to be the most revolutionary of sculptors. Paintings in marble so fine it was nearly transparent; portrait heads where the stubble and frown were intimately depicted in bronze. Everyday saints, and real modern people from this empathic Renaissance genius.
4. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine
Hayward, London, October (runs until 7 January)
Mesmerising retrospective of this great Japanese photographer whose pioneering adventures in picture-making span 50 years. Seascapes hovering between representation and abstraction, animals, people, cities and lightning fields that are not what they seem. A metaphysical meditation on the strangeness of photographs that is also captivating to the eye.
5. Alice Neel: Hot off the Griddle
Barbican, London; February
Marvellous survey of Neel’s paintings of 20th-century New Yorkers, from Andy Warhol bearing the scars of his recent shooting, to writers, singers, union organisers and neighbours, young and old. Anarchic, wilfully wonky, visually humorous and always humane.
6. Reopening of National Portrait Gallery
London; June
Terrific revitalisation, after a three-year closure, of this great but underloved collection (putting the disappointing rehang of Tate Britain to shame). Great groupings – life masks, miniatures, early photographs, heroes ancient and modern, and moving images, starting with a gigantic David Bowie in the four-floor stairwell.
7. Saint Francis of Assisi
National Gallery, London; May
The beloved animal-friendly saint got a superbly curated show all to himself with a staggering range of representations. Fra Angelico to Ribera and Zurbarán, Caravaggio to Antony Gormley, concluding with what looked like a piece of folded sackcloth, which turned out to be a relic of Francis’s own brown habit. Small but visually vast; entry (appositely) was free.
8. Islanders: The Making of the Mediterranean
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; February
A lost world of extraordinary art from the shores of the Mediterranean round Cyprus, Sardinia and Crete, this was unforgettable. The earliest crawling baby in antiquity, palm-sized and copper; Aphrodite rising out of rippling stone waves; elegant bronze hands, pointing and gesticulating, from a Sardinian lagoon. Spanning several millennia, and spectacular proof that there is no progress in art, only change.
9. The Cult of Beauty
Wellcome Collection, London; October (runs until 28 April)
Ancient Egyptian faces to Brazilian facelifts; wasp-waisted corsets to mouse-fur beauty spots: a riveting examination of humanity’s obsession with beauty through time and place – but also art. Hogarth’s satirical prints and paintings had their modern analogies, most particularly in a scaled-up lifesize mannequin of Barbie with a 21-inch waist and uselessly spindly legs.
10. Tomás Saraceno: Web(s) of Life
Serpentine, London; June
Cosmic sculptures woven by artful spiders; artworks made especially for animals, birds and children; spellbinding films about the lives of arachnids and the effects of cobalt mining on mankind and landscape. The vital interconnectedness of our ecosystems delicately conveyed by this philosopher-artist.
