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Top 10 of the year in art

December 15, 2016, 10:00 p.m.
Florine Stettheimer’s “Picnic at Bedford Hills,” from “Women Modernists in New York” at the Portland Museum of Art.
Florine Stettheimer’s “Picnic at Bedford Hills,” from “Women Modernists in New York” at the Portland Museum of Art.Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Best contemporary show “Geoffrey Farmer,” Institute of Contemporary Art.

Best modern show “O’Keeffe, Stettheimer, Torr, Zorach: Women Modernists in New York,” Portland Museum of Art

Best thematic/historical show “Asia in Amsterdam: the Culture of Luxury in the Golden Age,” Peabody Essex Museum

Most ambitious show “Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections,” McMullen Museum, Houghton Library, and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

Best group show “Explode Every Day: An Inquiry Into the Phenomenon of Wonder,” Mass MoCA

Best Old Master show “Splendor, Myth, and Vision: Nudes From the Prado,” Clark Art Institute

Best folk/craft show “Birds of a Feather,” Shelburne Museum

Best acquisition Frida Kahlo, “Dos Mujeres (Salvadora y Herminia),” Museum of Fine Arts

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Best sculpture “Rodin: Transforming Sculpture,” Peabody Essex Museum

Best new museum building Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine

Best renovation Yale Center for British Art

Best new permanent installation Song Gallery, Museum of Fine Arts

Sebastian Smee can be reached at sebastian.smee@globe.com.