Any discussion of the best New York art exhibitions of the past year must begin and end with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not only did the Met mount some of 2007’s most memorable shows (some of which are still running), the museum also, through a series of renovations, reinstallations, and expansions, took the greatest museum in America and made it even better. And the Met performed these feats of legerdemain seamlessly, without too much fanfare, and without changing its footprint. Even more impressive, the museum never lost sight of its civic and cultural purpose: Almost without exception, art was put ahead of everything else.

In April, with the reopening of the Metropolitan’s astounding New Greek and Roman Galleries, we witnessed one of the single greatest museum renovations in New York. Then came the addition of the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, as well as the newly renovated and reinstalled Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts, New Galleries for Oceanic Art, New Gallery for the Art of Native North America, and the spectacular New Galleries for 19th and Early-20th-Century European Paintings and Sculpture, which just opened in December.

Yet none of this hampered the museum’s curatorial chutzpah. The Met gave us one of the finest art seasons in recent memory. Among the great shows still on view are “The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Renaissance Masterpiece” (until January 13), “The Age of Rembrandt: Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” and “Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor,” both of which close Sunday. Other worthwhile exhibitions include “Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art” (until February 3), “Eternal Ancestors: The Art of the Central African Reliquary” (until March 2), and “Silversmiths to the Nation: Thomas Fletcher and Sidney Gardiner, 1808–1842,” which closes May 4. The Met also graced us with “Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings: The Clark Brothers Collect,” “Venice and the Islamic World, 828–1797,” and “Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí.”

But the Met was not the only game in town. The Jewish Museum mounted “The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend,” a thoughtfully installed retrospective, as well as the sweet exhibition “Camille Pissarro: Impressions of City and Country,” which closes February 3. The Frick Collection gave us “George Stubbs (1724–1806): A Celebration” and the wonderful “Gabriel de Saint-Aubin (1724–1780),” which closes January 27. The Morgan Library & Museum brought us “Apocalypse Then: Medieval Illuminations From the Morgan,” as well as “Painted With Words: Vincent van Gogh’s Letters to Émile Bernard” and “Contemporary Artists Select Old Masters: Drawing Connections: Baselitz, Kelly, Penone, Rockburne, and the Old Masters,” which has a gorgeous selection of works by Ellsworth Kelly and old and modern masters (both of which close Sunday). And the small, beautiful show “The Arts of Kashmir” continues through Sunday at the Asia Society.

The Rubin Museum of Art, still, oddly, one of the best kept secrets in New York, continued its ongoing string of exemplary exhibitions: “Bon: The Magic Word, The Indigenous Religion of Tibet” closes April 14, and “Big! Himalayan Art” is up through March 17. At the Whitney Museum of American Art was the premiere of Piotr Uklanski’s feature-length film “Summer Love,” a down-and-dirty, postmodern revision of the classic Western. Among the strangest shows in New York last year was the Museum of Modern Art’s retrospective of the Latin American Modernist “Armando Reverón,” who maintained peculiar relationships with life-size dolls. And we finally got to see the museum make ample use of its new galleries with “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years.” Still up at MoMA are two very worthwhile exhibitions: the retrospective of contemporary sculptor “Martin Puryear,” a show that grows on me with each visit, continues through January 14, and “Georges Seurat: The Drawings,” one of the most sublime shows of 2007, closes Monday.

And then there were smaller gallery exhibits that made large impressions. I cannot recount them all, but some deserve mention. Kinz, Tillou, and Feigen’s “Jeremy Blake: Memorial Exhibition” is a riveting show that is up through Saturday. Richard L. Feigen & Co.’s “Drawing in Space,” an exhibit of drawings by sculptors, closes January 18. And shows that are down but certainly not forgotten include “Claude Monet (1840–1926): A Tribute to Daniel Wildenstein and Katia Granoff,” at Wildenstein & Co., Inc.; “Willem de Kooning Drawings: 1920s–1970s,” at Allan Stone; and the Jonathan O’Hara Gallery’s “Simplicity of Means: Calder and the Devised Object,” an intimate, stunning exhibition of Calder’s homemade tools, games, ashtrays, dinner bells, and household utensils. I was also very struck by the shows by Bill Jensen at Cheim & Read, the Thornton Willis retrospective at Sideshow Gallery, and the Bowery Gallery’s “About Borromini,” with prints and drawings by Deborah Rosenthal and texts by Jed Perl, a shimmering, light-filled riff on the Roman architecture of Borromini. These three exhibitions represent some of the strongest work by contemporary abstract painters. Along with the spectacular shows at New York’s major museums, they rounded out 2007 — giving us what amounted to a complete year in art.