■ Best show “Goya: Order and Disorder,” Museum of Fine Arts
■ Best contemporary Mika Rottenberg, “Bowls, Balls, Souls, Holes,” Rose Art Museum, Waltham
■ Best 20th-Century show Franz West from the Hall Art Foundation, Mass MoCA and Williams College Museum of Art, North Adams and Williamstown
■ Best 19th-Century show “An American in London: Whistler & the Thames,” Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover
■ Best Old Master show “Donatello, Michelangelo, and Cellini: Sculptors Drawings From Renaissance Italy,” Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
■ Best single work TIE: Ragnar Kjartansson, “The Visitors,” Institute of Contemporary Art and William Kentridge, “The Refusal of Time,” Institute of Contemporary Art
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■ Best group show TIE: “Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present,” Institute of Contemporary Art and “Sight Specific: A Selection of American Perceptual Paintings,” Concord Art Association, Concord
■ Best local show of local artist “Jon Imber: Carry On,” Danforth Art, Framingham
■ Best out-of-state show of local artist “Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of the Brown Sisters,” Museum of Modern Art, New York
■ Best design show “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way,” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
■ Best American “Calder and Abstraction: Avant-Garde to Iconic” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
■ Best historical “Tell It With Pride: the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial,” Massachusetts Historical Society (organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
■ Best collective effort Bernard Langlais Art Trail in Maine, coordinated by Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
■ Three most disappointing shows “Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take,” Institute of Contemporary Art; “Jamie Wyeth,” Museum of Fine Arts; Romare Bearden, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H.
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■ Best pairing “Matisse Drawings: Curated by Ellsworth Kelly from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation Collection,” Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley.
■ Best new permanent collection installations TIE. Three new ancient Greek galleries, Museum of Fine Arts and Kunstkammer gallery, Museum of Fine Arts
The Year in Arts coverage
Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com.