Unlike books, films, and recorded music, a museum or gallery exhibition, like a live performance, can never be fully recaptured. Artworks, like performers, are alive and play off one another and their environments. A great work of art will almost always stand on its own, but certainly lighting, flow, architecture, wall color, and wall text, as well as, of course, what’s hanging nearby, all contribute to how an artwork ultimately is taken in. Either you experienced the particular magic in a particular setting or you did not.

I hesitate, then, to recount some of the best shows of 2006. If you missed a great exhibition, as we all do on occasion, what is the point of rubbing it in? (If your friends are anything like mine, then they have already sufficiently reprimanded you at the close of each show.) On the other hand, I do believe in giving credit where credit is due, in the hope not only that more wonderful shows will be encouraged but also that viewers will be encouraged to seek out work by artists whose exhibitions they may have missed or overlooked.

To that end, I would like to start with exhibits that are still on view, urging you to take them in before they come down. A few of the most spectacular shows of 2006 will be up into 2007. Others, such as the Frick’s once-in-a-lifetime, jewel-box presentation “Cimabue and Early Italian Devotional Painting,” close December 31.

If you have yet to see the pairing, or reunion, of Cimabue’s “The Flagellation of Christ,” from the Frick Collection, and “The Virgin and Child Enthroned With Two Angels” (both c. 1280), on loan from London’s National Gallery, then you owe it to yourself to do so over the weekend. Both paintings are devotional works in tempera and gold leaf. They were originally part of a larger ensemble or altarpiece, and they are small, stunning masterpieces in a glorious setting. While you are at the Frick, also take in “Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804): A New Testament,” which closes January 7, and “Masterpieces of European Painting From the Cleveland Museum of Art,” which closes January 28, both of which are very fine exhibitions.

Last summer, the Katonah Museum of Art mounted the beautiful, haunting exhibition “Andromeda Hotel: The Art of Joseph Cornell,” a show of approximately 50 of Cornell’s dreamy constructions and collages (what he referred to as “poetic theaters”). Now they have organized another wonderful show, “Ancient Art of the Cyclades,” which is on view until December 31. The concentrated grouping of some 100 exquisite objects, mostly female idols, all from the third millennium B.C.E., has the power to shed new light on a field of art with which many of us may think we are already familiar.

Two of the best museum shows of 2006 were installed not at a museum, but at the New York Public Library. “French Book Art: Artists and Poets in Dialogue,” included collaborative books between artists and poets, such as Malraux and Léger, Eluard and Picasso, Apollinaire and Dufy, Breton and Giacometti, as well as works by Chagall, de Chirico, Derain, Matisse, Man Ray, Sonia Delaunay, and Masson. A bibliophile’s dream, it brought us some of the most beautiful and innovative books made during the last 125 years.

Currently, the NYPL is offering another spectacular show, “Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan,” an exquisite exhibition of approximately 250 works of “ehon,” or Japanese “picture books,” from the library’s collections, which is on view until February 4, and should not be missed.

Other very worthwhile shows that are up through the New Year include “Alexander Calder in New York,” a mostly outdoor installation of sculptures at City Hall and City Hall Park; “Manet and the Execution of Maximilian” at the Museum of Modern Art (until January 29); the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture” (until February 19); the Morgan Library and Museum’s “Fragonard and the French Tradition” (until January 7) and “Saul Steinberg: Illuminations” (until March 4).

Almost as powerful for its documentary and historical elements as for its art, “Manet and the Execution of Maximilian” fully explores Manet’s depictions, made between 1867 and 1869, of the execution by firing squad of the Emperor Ferdinand Maximilian of Mexico in 1867. The Met’s “Set in Stone,” though underlit, is a sublime gathering of more than 80 sculpted heads in marble, wood, silver, and stone, most of which have been removed from their bodies, from the late Roman Empire to the Renaissance. “Saul Steinberg: Illuminations” is a wonderful, humorous romp through the entire oeuvre of Steinberg, whose witty illustrations for the New Yorker are as much a fixture of our city as the Chrysler Building, which he often illustrated.

Two of the greatest New York shows of 2006 are still up. The Metropolitan Museum’s “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde” closes January 7. The Guggenheim’s “El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, and History” is up until March 28. An astounding exhibit focusing on the art and artists surrounding the most important art dealer and fine-art publisher in Paris at the turn of the 20th century, “Cézanne to Picasso” is made up of many smaller exhibits — rooms of Picasso, including his 100-print masterpiece “Vollard Suite,” breathtaking Cézannes, Matisses, Bonnards, and van Goghs. “El Greco to Picasso,” a treasure trove of Spanish masterpieces, group works by its artists — El Greco, Picasso, Goya, Velázquez, Gris, and Zurbarán — by genre. This is not a perfect exhibition, but the dialogues that unfold between artists, especially in the areas of still life and portraiture, are truly out of this world.

Memorable gallery exhibits of the last year include Barbara Goodstein’s show of collages and her reliefs in white plaster on black grounds at Bowery Gallery; “Joaquin Torres-Garcia: Selected Works From the Alejandra, Aurelio, and Claudio Torres Collection,” a museum-quality grouping at Jan Krugier Gallery; and “The New Landscape/The New Still Life: Soutine and Modern Art,” which brought together works by Soutine and artists he influenced, including Pollock, de Kooning, Frank Auerbach, and Bill Jensen, at Cheim and Read. Other striking exhibits were Mari Lyons’s show of raucous-colored still lifes, nudes, self portraits, and studio interiors at First Street Gallery, Salvatore Federico’s abstract paintings and Alice Federico’s ceramic vases (both, respectively, at George Billis Gallery), and Thornton Willis’s abstract paintings at Elizabeth Harris Gallery.

Other shows worth mentioning are “Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet” and “Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh,” both of which were glorious exhibits mounted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and “Paul Klee and America,” a fantastical exhibition of 60 works by Klee held at Neue Galerie. Also of note was “Dada.” A mixed bag at MoMA, “Dada” proved that the movement, one of the most influential of the 20th century, was much, much more than Duchamp’s “Urinal.”

Among the most memorable and thrilling shows of 2006 were “Goya’s Last Works” at the Frick Collection and “David Smith: A Centennial” at the Guggenheim. “David Smith” brought Smith’s genius into full light. A tour de force, the show, beautifully installed, illuminated his wide range, use of materials, and approach, which was classical, blue-collar and rough-hewn, as well as poetic. “Goya,” a stunning, intimate collection of more than 50 works the artist made during the last four years of his life, was breathtaking. It included tiny, mysterious grisaille paintings on ivory, some of which shone like moonlight; some of which looked like cameos from hell.

I remember thinking last December, and I was not alone, that the museum lineup for 2006 did not look very promising. Looking back, boy was I wrong. Hopefully, next year will not only surprise us but will surpass 2006.