Critics picks':
Area's museums kept focus on the big picture
New directors, curators, and expansions diverted attention from some strong shows
This has been a notably eventful -- even tumultuous -- year for the Boston area's art museums. New directors and curators, expansion plans, and basic rethinking of what the museum of the 21st century should be all made for a year when politics and personas almost overshadowed exhibition schedules.
The Museum of Fine Arts continued to raise money and enthusiasm for its Norman Foster-designed renovation/expansion. Some version of it seems a definite go. The much-touted ''crystal spine" at the core of the makeover is a dubious idea, though, given that most art is light-sensitive, which severely limits what could be exhibited in the massive glass corridor. What the MFA needs is more gallery space, not a piece of trophy architecture.
In September, the Institute of Contemporary Art broke ground for its Diller + Scofidio building on the waterfront. The plans look terrific. With the projected completion in 2006, the ICA will become a collecting institution: No word yet on what will be in the collections.
The Harvard Art Museums, which, taken together, are among the 10 largest art museums in the nation, hired a new director this year. Thomas Lentz, who came from the Smithsonian, will be the man to shepherd a proposal for a much-needed museum on the Allston campus that Harvard is planning. Harvard's Fogg Art Museum, long overdue for a makeover that includes its climate control, which prevents it from getting loans from other institutions, is another issue Lentz faces.
Also in Cambridge, MIT and the Cambridge Arts Council continued to produce world-class public art, while Boston remained handicapped by an outdated system of judging and funding that has resulted in one bronze figurative atrocity after another. There's hope, though, in the form of a few organizations that bypass the mess that City Hall has made of public art: Among them are UrbanArts Inc., which has a partnership with the Massachusetts College of Art; the New England Foundation for the Arts; and the Fenway Alliance.
Lentz isn't the only Smithsonian employee to migrate north this year. Christraud Geary, a former curator of African art at the Washington-based institution, became the first full-time curator of African art at the Museum of Fine Arts. It's a great hire: Geary, a senior figure in the field and well-connected to collectors, is in a position to turn ''owners into donors," as they say in art circles.
A surprising number of great museums ring Boston. Several, including the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, are affiliated with educational institutions. After the much-loved former Addison director Adam Weinberg became head of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, Brian Allen was named this year to succeed him. Allen comes from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, which, like the Addison, is a thriving, well-endowed, well-run place.
A couple of local arts institutions changed their names this year. The Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities became Historic New England, which is odd because SPNEA had huge name-recognition and an acronym people could pronounce. (It comes out ''spinayuh.") An organization with a virtually unpronounceable acronym (try saying ''SMFA," for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts) can be forgiven for a name change, but the rechristening of SPNEA feels like an old friend has disappeared.
The Fuller Museum of Art in Brockton became the Fuller Craft Museum this year, to forge a stronger identity and in recognition of the Boston-Providence axis as one of the country's greatest centers for craft. The change also begs the question: Does anyone still think there's a clear dividing line between ''fine" art and craft?
The venerable Society of Arts and Crafts continued an increasingly strong exhibition program with ''Grimm's Fairy Tales Reinvented." Notable Boston-area artists including Peter Thibeault and Dale Broholm made works that reconsidered the grimmer side of Grimm.
The year's ''sleeper" in decorative arts was the Busch-Reisinger's ''Design-Recline: Modern Architecture and the Mid-Century Chaise Longue," which paired high modernist examples of that category of furniture with blown-up color photos of the houses they would have occupied.
Great solo shows of 2004: ''Gauguin Tahiti" at the MFA; Robert ParkeHarrison at the DeCordova; Ann Hamilton's gigantic installation ''Corpus" at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art; the David Ireland solo turn at the Addison; ''Niho Kozuru: Re-turning the Past," at the Paul Revere House; and Fernand Khnopff at Boston College. All were well-considered and had a purpose besides attracting visitors. The Khnopff show, for instance, was a rediscovery of a key Symbolist artist almost no one knew before the McMullen Museum put him back on the map.
The ''Gondola Days" show at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum let visitors ascend to the usually private top floor, where they witnessed an extravaganza documenting, among other things, the quirky collector's love affair with Venice.
In its first full year in its renovated and expanded facility, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem went from strength to strength, in such delightfully unexpected shows as the ''American Fancy" exhibition that documented the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, an era of prosperity and patriotism.
Another expansion in the works: Recently, the Gardner museum announced a plan for a new building in the backyard, which most visitors never noticed. There's poetic justice here: The Gardner's architect will be Renzo Piano, who worked for five years with former Harvard Art Museums director James Cuno on a plan for a museum on the banks of the Charles. Opposition from town and gown killed it off. Cuno is now director at the Art Institute of Chicago, where a Piano building is happening. And, thanks to the Gardner, the minimalist master will be represented at a Boston-area art museum after all. 