A ‘top ten’ is a tricky thing. What does it mean to be the best if you’re a collection of artworks? To overcome this dilemma, I have simply picked the exhibitions I enjoyed most last year. The following are in no particular order.

Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

A collection of beautifully eerie domestic scenes from 17th century Holland with ambiguous stories to tell. The title was deceptive: only a small number of paintings by Vermeer were on show, though for me they were the most captivating.

The Vorticists: Manifesto for a Modern World at Tate Britain, London

As interesting for the history and literature associated with the movement as for the art, which ranged from powerfully moving to comic and light-hearted. A favourite piece was Henri Gaudier-Brzeska's phallic head of American poet Ezra Pound.

The Unilever Series: Tacita Dean at Tate Modern, London

Dean explores our fascination with the dying qualities of analogue media through her 8mm film installation, in which eggs roll and thunder strikes to the backdrop of the Tate Modern. Another favourite from this year was her film of Cy Twombley made shortly before his death shown at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

Miro at Tate Modern, London

Miro creates a world that is easy to relate to, despite, or perhaps because of, its abstraction and ambiguity. Seeing this exhibition a second time at its home, The Fundacio Miro in Barcelona, was a treat I didn’t expect.

Watch Me Move: The Animation Show at the Barbican, London

Endlessly enjoyable, ‘The Animation Show’ demonstrated the largely unacknowledged range and depth of animation. I could have spent days watching extracts from filmmakers as diverse as Studio Ghibli and Jan Svankmajer.

Eyewitness: Hungarian Photography in the 20th Century at the Royal Academy, London

Reading as both historical commentary and account of photographic history in the twentieth century, this exhibition showed me some of the most powerful images I have seen to date as well as taught me much I didn’t know.

Pipilotti Rist at the Hayward Gallery, London

Rist’s work delights in its reworking of everyday experience into something special and bizarre. A chandelier made from underwear and a video of a woman peering out of a hole in the floor the size of a coin were some of the works on show.

Power of Making at the V&A, London

Fascinating for the bizarre selection of objects on display rather than for any theory on ‘making’ in society, I very much enjoyed the gorilla made from coat hangers, large knitted rug and selection of 3D printers on show. Who knew such things existed?

Mischief: Sculpture and Drawings by Lucia Nogueira at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge

Liam Gillick described her work as 'taking things that are close to hand and imbuing them with malignancy and magic.' I would agree: Nogueira’s simple juxtapositions have the power to shock and excite, even if it is not obvious why.

Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan at the National Gallery, London

I am finishing with the way I am planning to begin my year: I have to admit that I have sadly not (yet) seen this exhibition. I am fairly confident that it would have made the cut though, had I got there last year.