Almanac 2015

In each edition of the Almanac, now in its tenth year, we provide annual reports about the 67 countries in the region—including Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tonga and Vietnam, among others—and track a year’s worth of controversy, scandal, career moves, awards and other major headline news. 

We also invite influential art-world figures to reflect on the major cultural events of the past year and the year to come. Ute Meta Bauer, curator and founding director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Singapore, and Aaron Cezar, director of the Delfina Foundation in London, both show how neighboring, like-minded, yet distinctive art communities can generate momentum through convergence. Elsewhere, art scenes can remain stubbornly segregated and marginalized, often fighting for recognition—a situation that Japanese artist and artistic director of the Yokohama Triennale, Yasumasa Morimura, and Australian artist Tony Albert write about poignantly. In their reflections, arts patron Abdelmonem bin Eisa Alserkal from the United Arab Emirates and Jitish Kallat, Mumbai-based artist and Kochi-Muziris Biennale artistic director, speak from the perspective of homegrown pride, particularly the collective efforts to realize something that appears almost insurmountable.

The Five Plus One section, in which our editors select five artists who have made a significant impact in 2014 and one who promises to do so in 2015, features profiles of artists as varied in outlook as Xu Bing, Gülsün Karamustafa, FX Harsono, Sheela Gowda, Simryn Gill and Ei Arakawa. The editors also pick the ten best gallery and museum shows of the year, the exhibitions on our radar in 2015, and 12 of our favorite books.