BARBARA POLLACK an artist and writer based in New York, covering contemporary art since 1994. A contributing editor to ARTnews, Pollack also writes regularly for the New York Times, Time Out NY, Art & Auction, Modern Painters, and Art in America, among many other publications. She is currently writing a book about China's contemporary art scene.
1/ Ryan Trecartin at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, NYC
The youngest artist in the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Trecartin is truly a wunderkind who takes over every aspect of production - the script, the costumes, set design, direction and editing - of his maddeningly chaotic videos. He's the Matthew Barney of the YouTube set.
2/ Qiu Anxiong at Universal Studios, Beijing
This artist installed an old railway car in the center of the darkened gallery then projected old footage from Cultural Revolution films on each of the windows. The effect was haunting and hypnotic, yet every bit convincing of a trip back in time.
SHAMIM M MOMIN associate curator of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and Branch Director and Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria. She is the co-curator of the 2008 Whitney Biennial
Unquestionably the Robert Gober exhibition at the Schaulager in Basel was the most superlative art exhibition of the year - and, at risk of being hyperbolic, possibly that I've ever seen. Doubtless many others cited it, along with eloquent descriptions of its particular poetries, its perfectly banal and elegiac effects, its painful, mysterious, familiar evocations of everything dark and beautiful in the human soul. For me it was the astonishing, embarrassing, and somehow utterly normal fact that I was unaware I was in tears the entire time, which has never happened to me before, despite this being the place/discipline to which I've dedicated my mind and heart.
MICHAEL BRACEWELL writer, novelist and critic who has written books about Roxy Music, the 1990s and a cultural history of England, 'England Is Mine: Pop Life in Albion From Wilde to Goldie'. He was a judge for the 2007 Turner Prize.
The highlights of my year, perhaps inevitably, would be Gilbert & George 'Major Exhibition' at Tate Modern; Richard Hamilton, 'A Host of Angels' at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice; 'Pop is...' at Gagosian, London; and Glenn Brown at Gagosian, New York.
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