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More than any other year I can think of, 2008 has seemed like a year of enormous, rumbling paradigm shifts.

Looking at the big picture, there have been shifts in art's focus internationally, now plainly making themselves felt. The exhibition Unmonumental, which opened at the New Museum's new home in the Bowery in New York at the end of 2007, articulated a new aesthetic of delicacy, bricolage and ephemerality in art, announcing an emerging post-9/11 aesthetic.

Many of the objects seemed to be barely held together. The big, bold, brassy statements of biennale art and art-fair eye candy – the huge screen projections, or the quick-take irony-clad gestures beloved of figures such as Damien Hirst – have been superseded by an emerging generation's interest in making work that is more fragile and contingent, eschewing the go-go vibe of the market. Sensing the pervasive vulnerability of the social fabric and the economy underpinning it, it seems the artists were the canaries in the coal mine this year.

This was also a landmark year for women in art, a moment when women's rightful place at the table seemed both acknowledged and assured. With the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's definitive touring show WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution making the rounds (from L.A. to Washington, to Brooklyn to Vancouver, where it landed this fall), the art world turned back to consider the legacy of feminist thought that has provided such fresh approaches to artists of both genders ever since. Also, the touring retrospective of art by the 97-year-old French-born New York-based artist Louise Bourgeois came home to roost at the Guggenheim Museum in New York this spring, a document of female genius and sexuality at full throttle. And as the year comes to a close, the Museum of Modern Art in New York is presenting a feminist double header with Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist (until Feb. 2) and South African painter Marlene Dumas (until Feb. 16) – Rist with her immersive environment Pour Your Body Out in the museum's vast lobby space (a circular sofa bed and cushions allows complete absorption in her projected images of fruit trees, earthworms, naked women, fields of tulips, snuffling pigs and assorted psychedelia) and Dumas, whose lush paintings grapple with social injustice, female power, fertility and sexuality. Downstairs, in Rist's installation, children are to be found leaping from cushion to cushion, and one wonders (with pleasure) if the place will ever be the same again.

Within Canada, Quebec was on the rise this year, with the launch of the Québec Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal giving shape to a regional art scene that has been germinating off-camera – at least as far as the rest of Canada is concerned. With its strong museums (including the revitalized Galerie de l'UQAM (l'Université du Québec à Montréal) and the fledgling DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art in Old Montreal), its high quality visual-art programs at UQAM and Concordia University, and its steadily improving and diversifying commercial scene, this city is more and more a breeding ground for great new talent. The fact that the Centre International d'art contemporain de Montréal, under Claude Gosselin, is continuing to hire talented outsiders to curate the international Biennale de Montréal is also positive, with this spring bringing a fresh look from freelance London-based curator Scott Burnham.

Institutionally, too, some landmark hurdles have been cleared. Most notably, the Art Gallery of Ontario opened its doors again in November, setting a new standard for architectural sophistication in our museum world with its Frank Gehry-designed transformation. The galleries are gorgeous, and the deployment of the collection reflects a uniquely Canadian vantage point on art: polyglot, progressive and poised between Europe and what people of European heritage like to call the New World (that is to say, not new if your people have always been here). For the past five years or so, the Toronto art world has been like a city waiting for a sneeze; there's been a tremendous sense of suspended momentum at the core. Now that the AGO has sneezed – and a gloriously over-the-top “kerchooo!” at that – it can blow its nose and get down to the business of mounting exhibitions and shaping its collections, and that's a great relief.

As well, the stewardship of the National Gallery of Canada has finally been resolved with the appointment of Marc Mayer, who will be leaving his current role as director of the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal to take up his post in Ottawa on Jan. 19. Mayer takes the lead of an institution that has endured considerable turmoil, with some high-profile in-fighting among staff and management in recent months. As well, with the Conservatives in office (at least for now), Mayer will need all his powers of persuasion to defend National Gallery budgets and freedoms from incursions. Fortunately for us, Mayer could argue the bark off a tree, so it looks like we're good for now. In 2008, we turned the corner toward a better day.