The year hasn’t been short of blockbuster surveys and brilliantly curated displays, as well as smaller, more focused surveys that have been unjustly overlooked but which have proved quietly groundbreaking in their own way. The best exhibitions, which are not, of course, always the ones with the biggest fanfare, nor even the best loans, usually forge a new appreciation and understanding of the artist(s) under the spotlight. They make you radically rethink, knock back lingering prejudices and break down resistance. In other words, they disarm you. The three or four that have lingered longest in my mind, and have kept troubling it, did just that. Others simply showed great and familar artists to best advantage, creating the best possible space for the subject to shine.
Here’s Fisun Guner’s choice of the top eight exhibitions of the year.