The Best Art Exhibits of 2011* – Part 1

[Part 2 (of 3) now available here.]

When asked by Artlog to come up with my 3 or 4 best exhibits of 2011, I balked a bit, knowing that there was no way I’d be able to remember to hundreds of shows I saw this year. Luckily my Foursquare “history” page acts as a handy diary of everywhere I went this year. Scrolling through all the checkins helped jog my memory. Also a quick look at Museum webpages to fill in the blanks. All photos are my own.

1. Curator Eric Doeringer’s “I Like the Art World and the Art World Likes Me” at EFA Studios (NYC)

2. “The Making of Americans“ at The James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center (NYC)
3. “Bye Bye Kitty” at Japan Society (NYC)

4. “Alpine Desire“ at Austrian Cultural Forum (NYC)

5. Judith Linhares at Edward Thorp Gallery (NYC)
6. Hans Op de Beeck at Hirshhorn (Washington, D.C.)
7. R. Crumb at Society of Illustrators Museum (NYC)

8. “Tracing the Unseen Border“at La Mama Galleria (NYC)
9. “Bernard Faucon: The Most Beautiful Day of My Youth“  New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA)
10. Birney Imes at Ogden Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA)
11. “Get on the Block“ at Camel Art Space (Brooklyn)

12. Curator Jason Bailer Losh’s “Chinese Take Out“ at Art in General and nearby Chinese Restaurants (NYC)
13. “George Condo: Mental States” at New Museum (NYC)
14. “The Great Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910–1918” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (NYC)

15. Francis Alys at MoMA PS1 (Long Island City)
16. “Richard Serra Drawing“ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) And… Yes… of course Alexander McQueen at the Met too.
17. “Breaking Ground: The Whitney’s Founding Collection“ at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC)

18. “The ‘S’ Files“ at El Museo del Barrio and partner galleries BRIC Rotunda, Lehman College Art Gallery

Special Mention: Public Art Fund’s “Total Recall” in Brooklyn’s Metrotech which opened in 2010, but was up for most of 2011. These Matt Sheridan Smith’s inflatable sculptures were a great source of delight as one wondered if they’d by tumescent or not upon each visit.

Here in Part 1, I’m up through June, 2011 on Foursquare and twitpics. Part 2 (coming soon) will include July-December, anything I missed here, and Museum Nerd’s “NYC Art Exhibit of the Year.”

*This list is highly personal and only includes shows I actually visited. They are almost all museum and nonprofit-art-space exhibits from 2011 listed in chronological order of my first visit. I went to many of them more than once. I left out commercial gallery shows unless there was some special reason to include them. In the case of Judith Linhares, it was pure awesomeness and underknownness.