It was, undoubtedly, the Year of the Anty Christ.

Leading off Washington City Paper‘s Arts in Review issue is critic Jeffry Cudlin‘s lengthy consideration of the controversy surrounding the removal of a David Wojnarowicz video from the National Portrait Gallery’s “Hide/Seek” exhibit, as well as, well, the rest of the exhibit. He calls “Hide/Seek” a game-changing exhibit. He also thinks it’s kind of tame.

In his accompanying essay, Kriston Capps also reflects on the biggest art story of the year—-and notes that before “A Fire in My Belly” was removed at the behest of Smithsonian Secretary G. Wayne Clough, you could’ve argued that 2010 was a banner year for contemporary art in Washington museums.

Also inside, and also awesome:

Louis Jacobson lists the year’s best photography exhibits, and finds the cute side of extinction.

In theater, Trey Graham owns up on all his wrong assumptions (Oklahoma! It didn’t suck!). Bob Mondello thinks hard about the increasing commonplace practice of resident theaters lending their stages to out-of-town production. On the one hand,  he writes, it was nice when regional stages were dogmatically regional; and on the other…well, it’s nice to save on airfare. And Chris Klimek devotes way more than 140 characters to the topic of Twitter—-and how, increasingly, social media can cushion negative notices from dead-tree critics.

Mark Athitakis reflects on a year in which “big” novels—-we’re looking at you, Freedom—-disappointed and small ones reigned. Nevin Martell writes that D.C. is home to more and more very good mystery writers.

And finally, Erin Petty makes the case against dandyism. 2010, you can keep your tweed and knickers!