E-Mail This Article to a Friend Hail and farewell? The best in art and dance for 2003 COMPILED BY JEFFREY GANTZ

With two blockbuster old-master exhibits and a steady flow of solid museum and gallery shows, Boston in 2003 enjoyed another good art year. Dance had a turbulent time of it, however, with Boston Ballet doing all right on stage but facing financial problems off, and the rest of the usual suspects not offering much that’s new. Here’s a look at what we got, with review issue dates in parentheses so you can go back to our archives for the full story.

1) Faces in the crowd

The power of a single face was amply demonstrated by two powerful portraits that came to the Museum of Fine Arts: Edgar Degas’s La duchesse de Montejasi et ses filles, Elena et Camilla (July 18) and Jan Vermeer’s Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (November 28). The museum sold two Degas pastels and a Renoir oil to help finance the controversial purchase of the Degas (reported price: in excess of $20 million), but when the painting arrived, it proved just as incisive as the MFA’s great Sargent portrait of Gretchen Osgood Warren and her daughter Rachel. As for Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, it proved once again that a single Vermeer — any Vermeer — is a blockbuster show all by itself.

2) Museum pieces

The blockbuster museum events of 2003 were the MFA’s "Thomas Gainsborough 1727-1788" (July 18) and "Rembrandt’s Journey" (October 31) exhibits and the reopening of the Peabody Essex Museum (June 27). Also notable: "Traveling Scholars" (March 13), "The Melvin Blake and Frank Purnell Legacy" (March 21), and "John Currin Selects" (May 30), all at the MFA; "The Space Between" at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum (April 18); the 2003 Annual Exhibition (June 13) and the sculpture of Pat Keck (October 3) at the DeCordova Museum; "George Bellows’ Tragedies of War" at Harvard University’s Fogg Art Museum (August 22); "Raphael, Cellini, and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (October 17); "Painting4" at Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum (November 14), and Gregory Gillespie at the Fogg (December 19).

3) On and off the street

The highlights here included Amanda Means at Howard Yezerski Gallery (January 10); "Pierogi Presents" at Bernard Toale Gallery, Frank Noelker at the Yezerski, and Robert Preusser at Acme Fine Art (all May 9); Abelardo Morell and Jocelyn Lee at the Toale and Sol LeWitt at Barbara Krakow Gallery (all June 6); Samuel Bak (July 25) and Brother Thomas (September 12) at the Pucker Gallery; "Summer Surprises" at the Nielsen Gallery and "4 To Look At" at the Krakow (both August 1); Ken Beck at the Gallery at the Piano Factory (November 14), and Gregory Gillespie at the Nielsen (December 19).

4) The power of paper

In April, the Southern Graphics Council and the Boston Printmakers staged "Making Histories: Revolution and Representation 2003" (March 28), an international conference that included more than 50 exhibits in Boston. And paper, in the form of etchings and drawings, was the star component of "Rembrandt’s Journey" (October 31), with the 20 or so oils merely providing context. It also made a splash in the MFA’s "Visions and Revisions: Art on Paper Since 1960" (March 28), though shoehorning 122 works on paper into the diminutive Torf Gallery didn’t make for the best presentation.

5) Photo finish

By focusing on Siskind’s transition from left-leaning social documentarian to abstract artist, "Interior Drama: Aaron Siskind’s Photographs of the 1940s" at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum (December 12) raised vital questions about the nature and purpose of abstraction. Also notable were the Bohnchang Koo show at the Peabody Essex and "American Perspectives: Photographs from the Polaroid Collection" at the Boston University Art Gallery and the Photographic Resource Center (both January 10) and Sebastião Salgado’s "Migrations — Humanity in Transition" and "The Children" at the Portland Museum of Art and five other venues in Maine (February 21).

6) The turning point?

People are apt to look back at 2003 as a watershed year in the history of Boston Ballet; the question is, in which direction is the company going? In February, Boston Ballet, in the wake of an $800,000 Nutcracker shortfall, cancelled four performances of the season-ending Romeo and Juliet and downsized its 2003-2004 subscription schedule from 60 performances to 42. Principal Gaël Lambiotte and soloist Sabine Chaland left in the middle of the season. A number of popular principals and soloists — among them Paul Thrussell, Jennifer Gelfand, Simon Ball, April Ball, and Tara Hench — chose to leave (or were not offered new contracts) at the end of the season. The dancers whom artistic director Mikko Nissinen chose to replace them made a generally favorable impression in October, especially new principal Lorna Feijóo. But then the Wang Center announced that next year it intends to replace The Nutcracker — the company’s big moneymaker — with the Rockettes’ touring Radio City Christmas Spectacular, a decision that could conceivably drive Boston Ballet out of business. Will a new home be found for The Nutcracker? And will Boston flock to the Wang Theatre to see the Rockettes? We’ll know the answers by this time next year.

7) Meanwhile, on stage . . .

The Ballet had a mostly positive year. Frederick Ashton’s barnyard blast La Fille Mal Gardée (February 28) was a huge success with both audiences and critics. The "All-Balanchine" program of Ballo della Regina, Monumentum pro Gesualdo, Movements for Piano and Orchestra, and Prodigal Son (April 4) proved that the company can do Mr. B in the same ballpark with New York City Ballet. The Rudi van Dantzig Romeo and Juliet (May 16) and the Rudolf Nureyev Don Quixote (October 24 and November 7), the latter with American Ballet Theatre guest artist José Manuel Carreño, were intriguing alternatives that perhaps don’t need to be repeated; "Stars and Stripes" (October 31) brought creditable performances of Balanchine’s Mozartiana and Stars and Stripes (with ABT guest artist Ethan Stiefel) and David Dawson’s much-debated The Grey Area, which was at least worth seeing. This year’s Nutcracker (December 12) is not all that new, but if you look at the video competition (December 5), you’ll see why it’s so good.

8) The other home teams

Highlights here would include Anna Myer at the Tsai Performance Center (February 7); Prometheus Dance Company’s Apokalypsis at the BCA’s Cyclorama (February 21), two performances from Boston Conservatory (February 28 and November 21), Rebecca Rice at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center (June 6), Jody Weber at Green Street (June 20), and the Boston Dance Collective’s 30th-anniversary program at the Tsai Center (September 26).

9) The out-of-towners

We had the big names: Bill T. Jones with the Orion String Quartet at the Shubert Theatre (January 24); Richard Move and his one-man Martha Graham show at Sanders Theatre (February 14); Boris Eifman at the Wang Theatre and Mark Morris at the Shubert (both March 21); Eiko & Koma at Blackman Theatre (April 11); Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater at the Wang (May 2); Pilobolus at the Shubert (May 23); Rennie Harris at the Majestic Theatre (October 24); and the Kirov Ballet at the Wang (November 21). The Kirov brought what Boston has hardly ever seen, Mikhail Fokine’s Les Sylphides, Shéhérazade, and Firebird, and it played to a practically sold-out house. Many of the other familiar faces, however (Ailey and Pilobolus in particular), brought all-too-familiar fare, and Eifman’s popularity continues to puzzle. It was a good year for flamenco, with World Music’s Flamenco Fest at the Shubert (January 31), Isaac and Nino de los Reyes at the Cyclorama (April 4), María Pagés at the Majestic (June 27), and Noche Flamenca at the Majestic (October 10).

10) And out of town

For those willing to travel a short distance — or a long one — there was plenty of good dancing on offer. Tapestry 2003 at the National Heritage Museum in Lexington (May 23). Chris Elam (July 18), Peter Boal (July 25), and David Parker + Bang (August 1) at Concord Academy. Twyla Tharp (June 27) and Nacho Duato’s Compañía Nacional de Danza 2 (August 8) at Jacob’s Pillow. The Music Hall Follies at the Portsmouth Music Hall (July 4). In New York, there was Twyla Tharp doing The One Hundreds in Battery Park (September 19) plus Merce Cunningham (October 24) and Cloud Gate (November 28) at BAM. And the ballet companies we saw out of town — the Staatsoper Berlin doing Swan Lake, ABT doing Romeo and Juliet and Don Quixote, NYCB and the Paris Opera Ballet doing Balanchine — suggested that Boston Ballet is not out of its depth as a world-class company, though Paris in Symphony in C and The Four Temperaments and the Kirov in its Fokine program gave everybody something to shoot at.