Exhibition of the Year

Michelangelo & Sebastiano

National Gallery, London
15 March–25 June

This grand and grandly serious exhibition explored the creative exchange between Michelangelo and Sebastiano, with the help of exceptional loans such as the latter’s Lamentation from Viterbo and the imaginative use of a 3D-printed model of the Borgherini Chapel in San Pietro in Montorio, Rome.

Judith (or Salome?) (1510), Sebastiano del Piombo. © National Gallery, London

Raphael: The Drawings

The Ashmolean, Oxford
1 June–3 September

One-hundred-and-twenty drawings by Raphael were brought together with loans from the Albertina, the Uffizi and elsewhere, complementing the Ashmolean’s own holdings. The exhibition aimed to shed new light on the ‘rhetorical and expressive aspects’ of Raphael’s works on paper.

A man carrying an older man on his back (detail; c. 1513–14), Raphael. © Albertina Museum, Vienna

Small Wonders: Gothic Boxwood Miniatures

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
17 June–17 September

Previously at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Met Cloisters, this exhibition of 16th-century boxwood carvings and prayer nuts made a virtue of their miniature forms. Seventy-nine works explored the production of a single workshop in or around Delft.

Prayer Bead with the Adoration of the Magi and the Crucifixion (early 16th century), Netherlands. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo: Peter Zeray

Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power

Tate Modern, London
12 July–22 October

This groundbreaking survey of two decades of black American art and the political activism of African-American artists introduced leading figures such as Barkley L. Hendricks and Melvyn Edwards to enthusiastic new audiences.

Icon For My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved Any Black People–Bobby Seale) (1969), Barkley L. Hendricks. © Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks. Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Pierre Gouthière: Virtuoso Gilder at the French Court

Frick Collection, New York
16 November 2016–19 February

A collaboration with the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris, this was a scholarly exhibition that displayed new research on, and clarified attributions to, the great 18th-century metalworker Pierre Gouthière.

One of a pair of vases, 1782, gilt bronze by Pierre Gouthière, after a design by François-Joseph Bélanger. Musée du Louvre, Paris

One of a pair of vases (1782), by Pierre Gouthière, after a design by François-Joseph Bélanger. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Photo: Joseph Godla

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960–1985

Hammer Museum, LA
15 September–31 December

This reappraisal of the work of more than 100 women artists from Latin America or with Latino heritage – including Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Marta Minujín – set their work in the social and political contexts in which it was created.

Edita [the one with the feather duster], Panama (from the series Servitude; 1977), Sandra Eleta. Courtesy of Galería Arteconsult S.A., Panama. © the artist

Edita [the one with the feather duster], Panama (from the series Servitude; 1977–78), Sandra Eleta. © The artist. Courtesy of Galería Arteconsult S.A., Panama