Ten best NYC art exhibits of 2017

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness the work of Michelangelo (1475–1464) in the flesh. While the lines to get in were long, and it was hard at times to get a peek at the master’s exquisite drawings, the brush with greatness was well worth any inconvenience.—Howard Halle

Through Feb 12.

Megadealer Zwirner devoted three of his galleries uptown and down to the work of the legendary Kusama, and viewers queued up in the expectation of drinking in the unique brand of artistic delirium. Naturally, Kusama delivered the goods with new “Infinity Rooms” installations and “Infinity Net” paintings.—HH

Ended Dec 16.

While this retrospective of the work of David Hockney provides few revelations, it does offer a concision that emphasizes the themes found throughout the 80-year-old artist’s production. His fable career produced paintings that emulated the Abstract Expressionists but queered their machismo with the addition of bathroom-stall graffiti; cool sophisticated scenes of L.A.; and gorgeously deft portraits.—Joseph R. Wolin

Through Feb 25.

In spite of her wealth, Florine Stettheimer—Jazz Age poet, set designer, saloniste extraordinaire, painter of modern life—was marginalized within New York Society for being both Jewish and female. Yet as the joyous retrospective revealed, she built a world of her own through fantastical, faux-naive paintings populated with some of the most interesting figures (Alfred Stieglitz, Marcel Duchamp) of her day.—Anne Doran

Ended Sept 24.

Demolishing conventions of beauty with garish élan, Minter’s work sparkled in this survey spanning 50 years. Starting with Minter’s brutal black-and-white photos of her addiction-ravaged mother, the show also rounded up her videos and paintings, cementing her reputation as an artist who finds ugliness in beauty and vice versa.—HH

Ended May 7.

Comic books, pulp fiction, film noir and topics from baseball and religion to politics and personal musings are all in the well from which this prolific, self-taught artist draws inspiration for his text-heavy comix-style drawings. This career survey packed to the rafters with work revealed a a crackpot seer, feverishly conjuring visions from his splenetic imagination.—HH

Ended Apr 9.

This year’s edition is notable for being the first in the Whitney’s meat-packing district home and also for being a relatively intimate affair, with fewer artists than in Biennales pasts. As it turns out, less was definitely more in this case.—HH

Ended June 11.

Evoking The Arcades Project, the unfinished opus by leftist German cultural critic Walter Benjamin, this selection of contemporary art never ran off the rails to become academic, pretentious or dull. The show was like a good book: It took time and a lot of reading, but the experience proved entrancing.—JRW

Ended Aug 6.

Though museums seldom encourage substance abuse, the Whitney’s terrific retrospective of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica (1937–1980) came close. Devoting much of its real estate to the space-filling, immersive installations that are his most impressive achievements, the show also examined his sojourn in ’70s New York, where he threw himself into the gay underground and disco-era culture and produced work in which he obsessed over sex, drugs and rock & roll.—JRW

Ended Oct 1.

A focus on fragrance literally wafted through this show marking Yi as the recipient of the Guggenheim Museum’s annual Hugo Boss Prize. Wrapping her art in an aura of clinical chic, Yi plumbed the way society favors the ocular over the olfactory, casting sensory preference as gendered privilege. Even in the realm of the senses, we cannot escape sexual politics.—HH

Ended July 5.