At a global level this is one of the worst years on record. The amount of human suffering intensified during Donald Trump’s presidency. It might be the end of the planet but more hopefully, the end of the hegemonic order.

Despite all the tragedy there are moments full of joy. So let’s share a few.

 

Best Personal News
The best news of 2017 is that Paul and I got married on January 1, 2017. We said no gifts but there was a lot of love and several gorgeous bowls.

   

 

Best Wedding (Besides My Own)
Katherine Goldschmidt and David Buchanan took over a village in the South of France. As you do.

 

Best Restaurant in LA
The A.O.C. Good food, wonderful courtyard.

 

Best New Chinese Restaurant in SF
China Live. Not cheap but yummy and fun.

 

Best Local Museum Show
Matisse Diebenkorn at SFMOMA

 

Best Domestic Gallery Show
Ad Reinhardt Blue at David Zwirmer Gallery. Just sublime.

 

Best New Art Gallery
Hauser + Wirth LA

 

Best Domestic Museum
National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington DC

 

Best Foreign Art Museum
Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. Finally got to Bilbao!

 

Best Non Domestic House Museum
It’s a tie. Erno Goldfinger House in London for the modern set. Casa Batllo by Gaudi in Barcelona for the ornamental set.

   

 

Best Political March
Womens March the day after the inauguration. Hope.

 

Best Domestic Hotel
The Mauna Kea. It’s almost foreign, but Hawaii is in the Union. If you love strong yet warm modernism The Mauna Kea is your place. Stay in the original wing by SOM. It’s better.

 

Best Domestic Show
Torch Song. Without the Trilogy. Trimming it down helped make it relevant for today’s audience. Starring Michael Urie and Mercedes Ruehl.

 

Best Foreign Show
Well show seen in a foreign county. We saw “Angels in America” at the UK’s national theater. Nathan Lane nearly stole the show as the evil Roy Cohn. But Russell Tovey as Joe kept the tension up. It was a triumph.

 

Best New House (That I got to stay in.)
Cherie and David’s house in Carmel Highlands is both elegant and relaxed. My new favorite place to hang out.

 

Best Novel
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Tough going at first but another world once you got going.

 

Best Memoir
Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved by Beauty by Kate Hennessy. I don’t think she would be want to be canonized.

 

Best Biography
Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by DT Max. I hope I can read everything in this lifetime.

 

Best Architecture Biography
You Say To Brick: A Life of Louis Kahn by Wendy Lesser. This is the kind of biography that will appeal to the converted as well as the unconverted.

 

Best New Art Book by an Old Friend
The Spiral Jetty Encyclo: Exploring Robert Smithson’s Earthwork through Time by Hikmet Sidney Loe

 

Best New Architecture Exhibit (and Catalog) by an Old Friend
Never Built New York by Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell

   

 

Best New Design Book by an Old Friend
Home: the Best of the New York Times Home Section: The Way We Live Now by Noel Millea. It’s not the way I live now but everybody I know misses the Home Section.

   

 

Happy New Year!