My column last week was the first half of an overview of the 2008 local visual arts year, addressing mostly personnel and institutional changes. Today I visit exhibitions, the meeting grounds of artists/institutions and the public, that were significant but didn't make it onto the year's crowded top 10 list published last week.

As with glass in 2007, ceramics garnered citywide attention. The medium rode in with the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts conference in March, which inspired more than 100 exhibitions and drew an estimated 5,000 attendees.

Most of those exhibitions ran during conference week, requiring a marathon mentality to see but rewarding with similar highs. Special recognition is due the community spirit that made it all happen, particularly because Pittsburgh agreed to host the large conference with far less than usual lead time.

Kudos to Manchester Craftsmen's Guild's Joshua Green who was local organizer and worked with unfathomable energy, and to both arts and non-arts venues that provided help and exhibition space (including Ellis School and Armory, the Alcoa Corporate Center, Standard Ceramic and the Andrew Carnegie Free Library, Carnegie, among many laudable sites).

Conference artists Jeffrey Mongrain and Nicholas Kripal even returned to create a compelling site-specific installation within Trinity Cathedral that was the highlight of the Three Rivers Arts Festival.

My only regret is that, due to the short planning schedule, our larger institutions were unable to fully participate.

The Carnegie International dominated Carnegie Museum of Art, but exceptional exhibitions hung in the Works on Paper Gallery including "Abstract Art Before 1950: Watercolors, Drawings, Prints and Photographs" and "Giovanni Battista Piranesi: Architecture and the Spaces of the Imagination" (the latter through Feb. 15).

Piet Mondrian and John Sloan were presented expansively at The Andy Warhol Museum and Westmoreland Museum of American Art, respectively, while resident artist Susan Taylor Glasgow shone at the Pittsburgh Glass Center.

Carnegie Mellon's Miller Gallery treated with a retrospective of seminal fiber artist Nancy Crow and brought in the politically charged "Yes Men," while CMU's Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation introduced the life and work of 19th century artist Pancrace Bessa.

Exhibitions by noted contemporary photographers David Graham and Rosamond Purcell continued the excellence we've come to expect of Silver Eye Center for Photography, as does "The Enamel Experience" at the Society for Contemporary Craft (the latter through Jan. 10).

Fe Gallery's eye-popping, salon-style "In the Making: 250 Years/250 Artists" was one of the more successful concepts riding the Pittsburgh 250th bandwagon (through Saturday), along with the crowd-pleasing second Pittsburgh Festival of Lights that stretched from Downtown into Oakland and up the sides of Pitt's Cathedral of Learning.

Appropriate to the concurrent Ligonier 250 celebration was "Portraits of the Eastern Frontier: Featuring Robert Griffing, John Buxton and Chas Fagan" at the Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art (SAMA), Ligonier Valley.

Opportunities for local artists to be recognized continued to thrive, displaying at least a segment of the region's vast creative community. These include the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh Annual Exhibition, usually held at the Carnegie but this year at The Warhol; the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts "Biennial," held for the first time in conjunction with Pittsburgh Filmmakers; the Westmoreland's "Juried Biennial"; a juried "Biennial" at SAMA, Loretto; and the Southwestern Pennsylvania Council for the Arts' "Annual Regional Juried Art Exhibition," this year at SAMA, Ligonier Valley.

And lastly, the Westmoreland greeted the official start of its 50th anniversary year with a literal bang, organizing, besides birthday shows, Greensburg's first public New Year's Eve celebration, with fireworks.

Some of the year's most exhilarating experiences were provided by local artists who invested considerable time, creativity and thought to the preparation of exhibitions that were visually and intellectually rewarding.

Prominent were 2008 Artist of the Year Susanne Slavick and 2008 Emerging Artist of the Year Adam Welch at the Center for the Arts.

Also outstanding were "Steel: Pittsburgh Drawings by Craig McPherson" at The Frick Art Museum; "Fabrizio Gerbino: Beyond the Object" at Concept Art Gallery; Fumino Hora's "Doppel Ganger" at Pittsburgh Filmmakers Melwood Gallery; and William D. Wade's "Waterfall Spirits" and Kathleen Dlugos' "The Shape of Days" at the Westmoreland, the latter through Feb. 1.

And a few noteworthy pairings: Robert Bowden's watercolors and son Paul Bowden's sculpture at Mendelson Gallery; "Robert Qualters & Charlee Brodsky" and Sue Abramson & Jonathan Shapiro" at the Center for the Arts (through Jan. 25).

In toto, a very good year. I wish at least as good a 2009 to all of our region's artists and arts organizations, particularly in light of current challenges.