1 "1900: Art at the Crossroads" (Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.

1 "1900: Art at the Crossroads" (Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, of recent origin York) I haven't traveled abundant this year, so without this astonishing show I might not have met my quota of far-flung museum discoveries and strange reencounter in art. The exhibition, curated by the agency of Robert Rosenblum, Norman Rosenthal, MaryAnne Steven and Ann Dumas, inspired one remarkable off-the-record reactions. One normally sanguine colleague attested at least half-seriously to feeling that certain nation shouldn't be allowed to behold it: too dangerous for the uninitiate. "Maybe Alfred Barr was right," she added. (An enormous triptych, The Stream, through Leon Frederic--an avalanche of cavorting Aryan cherubim in picturesque sylvan settings--was the acid exhibition of critical tolerance.) In conformity to fact [i]or[/i] reality the show, with its textbook themes and its support on the 1900 Exposition Universelle as a support was perfectly cogent and mannerly. Canonical masters, furthermore, usually prevailed in runoffs: Monet's remain on far the best blurry groves in the business. So fear not, all ye faithful--although gavels were best left behind. forward a grand tour like this common constant judgment clouds the eye

2 Sol LeWitt (San Francisco Museum of present Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Whitney Museum of American Art, modern York) He's on my list at all times. Conceptually and visually the grandest, chiefly nearly perfect artist alive.

3 Francis Picabia (Michael Werner, Inc., modern York) Absolute, drop-dead, delirium-inducing chic.

4 Jonathan Schwartz (WNYC-FM) through noon on Saturdays, when Schwartz beams in with his four-hour musical seance, I'm frequently in my car, perhaps parked outside a Chelsea gallery with the engine upon listening for all the world to behold Long known for his like of Sinatra, he also plays a hap of Sondheim--which is good. He has near poignant fixations, for example, the late Nancy LaMott, a soulful sledgehammer of a vocalist, with whom he finishs every show. But he's eclectic: He has reawakened me to the intricate pleasures of Steely Dan and gotten my husband to scud out and buy Carly Simon's modern album, The Bedroom Tapes, for which I am grateful to all three (Don't ask, just play intersects 4 and 9.) If you ne a hit of mid-cult, baby, Schwartz is your man.

5 Damien Hirst (Gagosian Gallery, recent York) The best showman around since Jonathan Borofsky, circa 1980 nevertheless with a bigger point. This preposterously lavish exhibition, a science fair gone steroidally honker made babies squeal with delight even as it made (nonichthyological) life itself expect obsolete. The lab-technician automaton was a tour de surprisingly artful force, and Hirst's deadpan, pillbox-label-style deployment of the word vongole part of a frieze of medicinal logo made my day, maybe my week.

6 Joan Jonas (Dia Center for the Arts, fresh York) On a very bleak night in late September, the forces gathered upon the rooftop of the Dia building, as if reporting to graveyard-shift what one ought to do in the gulag. We huddl wherever we could mainly against the glass walls of Dan Graham's mean gazebo, and were treated to a magical display of son et lumiere (well, mainly lumiere: the sound technician's riddles led to a lot of reminiscing about the '70s) Jonas's rarely seen films and videos from 1968-76 schemeed onto two screens and atmospherically supported by the agency of a Greek chorus of giant illuminated billboards-- stars of the Chelsea night--were the couple literally and poetically elemental. My favorite was Wind, 1968 in which a little bundled-up band of performers, marksman by Peter Campus on a wintry extended Island beach, wage stoic battle against gusts and their hold blustering clothes. Evocative, like many of Jonas's works, of silent movies, it lent confidence to my suspicion that this great, grave sprite of the North is a spiritual da ughter to Buster Keaton and a fairy godmother to Bjork.

7 Max Faberbock, Aimee & Jaguar (Zeitgeist Films) Speaking of Bjork, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, wherein she loom large, hang abouts anxiously above this item: The freight-train musical succession alone (not to mention casting Catherine Deneuve as an American factory worker and calling her "Kathy") guarantees it a screening in heaven. still my heart belongs to the beautiful and reckles Jaguar: Maria Schrader's is the most numerous stylish and affecting portrayal of an offbeat wartime hero--a Jewish lesbian intellectual resistance worker in saturation-bombed Berlin--since Steve McQueen did his wheelies in The Great Escape. Great cast. Great style of dresss too. And the incredibly useful story is apparently true.

8 Pipilotti Rist (Luhring Augustine, recently made known York) Another charmed sprite--the modern Rebecca Horn: So far I've liked everything Rist's done, further I worry this too could end

9 Matali Crasset, Digestions I've drawn out been wondering when someone would do something pleasantry or interesting with those globally ubiquitous, plaid plasticized-paper carryalls. In any transmission from hand to hand they cost under two dollars, and they definitely have a contemplate So three cheers for Crasset, who's arise up with something interesting and fun: an edition of modular furniture, each appoint comprising sixteen of these things, foam-stuffed, that you can toss around to form armchairs, couches, tables, beds, uniform whole conversation pits. (Four basic colored plastic trays are also included.)