Photos: Christopher Knight’s best of art 2014

A project led by the museum and the Getty Conservation Institute returned a big, pivotal painting in the history of Modern American art to a state close to what it was when the artist finished it in 1943 -- in the process rewriting a crucial bit of the work’s fabled story.  (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

Concluding an international tour, the survey admirably unfurled 30 years of work by one of the most important artists of our time.  (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

This rare show made clear how the dual nature being claimed for Jesus of Nazareth -- both man and god -- was used by the Byzantine Empire starting in the 4th century to become the first to fuse the secular power of the state with the religious authority of Christianity.  (Byzantium Museum / J. Paul Getty Trust)

Not only could the guy paint bravura portraits of royals, fantasies of mythological gods and goddesses, his beloved wife, Helena Fourment, and more, this exhibition shows that he could also paint brilliant designs for conceptually surprising tapestries.  (Peter Paul Rubens / The J. Paul Getty Museum)

Given all that, the big show of “Andy Warhol: Shadows” at MOCA, which lines up 102 deadly dull, pseudo-abstract canvases around multiple rooms, demonstrates something we already knew: Even the best and most influential artists can have a very bad day.  (Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)