Exhibitions focused on those themes account for half of the entries on my list of the region’s top art shows for 2016. Among the shows dealing with current issues, the first to open was “The Future We Remember” at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art.” Taking a long view of the human species’ impact on the Earth, this 12-artist show centered on the theory that human activity is having unprecedented, long-term effects on the environment and the geological record.

Highlights included Dario Robleto’s sculptural installations recalling old-fashioned natural-history displays and curiosity cabinets, and several “plastiglomerate stone samples” found and contributed to the show by Kelly Jazvac and Patricia Corcoran. In a related vein was Emil Lukas’ “Timeline Under Pear Tree,” a 40-foot-long, horizontal column whose separate segments were made from different combinations of organic and inorganic materials, all cast in a hole in the artist’s backyard.

SECCA’s other dynamic group show organized around contemporary socio-political issues is its current exhibition, “Dispatches,” scheduled to remain on view through Feb. 19 of next year. This provocative exhibition brings together works by 34 contemporary artists and photojournalists who have documented or responded creatively to critical issues including national security, ecological justice, border-crossing migration, racial profiling and this year’s presidential election.

And then there’s the current show at Winston-Salem State University’s “Diggs Gallery, whose title poses the question “Do You See Me?” On view through March 1 it consists of recent works by nine non-white artists intent on critically re-examining racial and gender-based stereotypes. Speaking directly and indirectly to recent controversies over racial profiling by police and other social authorities, the show is particularly relevant for an audience whose core constituents are students at a historically black university.

As a repository of outstanding American art, Reynolda House routinely mounts exhibitions that engage aspects of American art history. The two noteworthy examples in 2016 were its shows focused on the work of photographer Ansel Adams and painter Grant Wood, 20th-century artists of iconic status. “Ansel Adams: Eloquent Light” brought together 40 photographs and related materials spanning Adams’ influential 60-year career. The emphasis, though, was on his most popular work, the majestic landscape photographs. These images stand as 20th-century counterparts to the outstanding 19th-century landscape paintings in Reynolda House’s collection.

“Grant Wood and the American Farm,” on view through Saturday, was organized around “Spring Turning,” Wood’s only painting owned by Reynolda House — a bird’s-eye-view of a cultivated farm field in midwestern hill country, painted in 1936. Another inspiration for the show is the Reynolda estate’s original function as a state-of-the-art model farm. The overarching focus is the central place of agrarian life in this country from 1850 through the mid-20th century.

It’s worth noting that the artist responsible for the Triad’s liveliest contemporary solo exhibition this year is 92 years old. Kendall Shaw, a self-described Creole-Cajun artist born in New Orleans, clearly hasn’t let his age impede his a vital practice as a painter. His show this fall at Wake Forest University’s Hanes Art Gallery, titled “Energy Rocks Our Enormous Crib,” gathered 15 of his recent paintings and several preparatory studies. Shaw’s stated aim, to celebrate “the energy of life and universal existence,” is richly fulfilled in these works.

Two of the Triad’s best group shows by contemporary artists were at GreenHill in Greensboro. One of them, “Last Remaining Cathedral: Illuminations of Nature,” combined works by painter Robert Johnson and sculptor Daniel Essig, who share a spiritual view of nature. Johnson’s extensively researched, distinctively stylized paintings of spectacular landscapes reflect a range of influences — Tibetan thangka paintings, Indian miniatures, traditional Balinese art, Latin American folk art, and late-medieval Italian painting. Essig’s wildlife-based sculptures incorporate small handmade books. Like Johnson’s paintings, they’re grounded in nature and rely on intricate detail.

GreenHill’s liveliest group show this year was “Insistent Objects: Works by Young NC Sculptors.”

Greensboro’s premier art venue, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, was the site of two particularly compelling shows that round out my list for 2016. The museum hosted “Pan American Modernism: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America and the United States.” About 70 works by 17 artists from 13 countries in North, Central and South America — all from the collection of the University of Miami’s Lowe Art Museum — made up this eye-opening show that re-examined the legacy of 20th-century American art from a postmodern, global perspective. Among its other virtues it provided a welcome corrective to widely accepted but misleadingly limited notions about America and the development of modernism. Challenging the conventional view of modernism as a European phenomenon reinvented in the United States to spread outward, the show stood as a compelling visual argument that artistic modernism is a distinctly American phenomenon, in the broader, continental sense.

And in the summer the Weatherspoon featured “Inside the Outside: Five Self-taught Artists from the William Louis-Dreyfus Foundation.” This impressive selection of works by five 20th- and 21st-century artists challenged the concept of “outsider art,” in part by refusing to employ the term.

In addition to recognizing the Triad’s best art shows of 2016, I want to also remember three local artists who died this year after long histories of contributing significantly to the local visual-art scene. First, Clyde Fowler — the longtime head of the visual arts program at UNC School of the Arts — died on Feb. 1 after a brief illness. As a painter Clyde was known and respected locally and across the state, but the impact of his teaching has been far more widespread. While maintaining his role at the school, Clyde pursued a parallel career as a painter. His paintings, which he continued to make in retirement, were featured in shows at venues across the region.

Ben Rouzie, a wood sculptor and founding member of Artworks Gallery, died in April at the age of 94. Rouzie studied design and sculpture at UNC-Chapel Hill and the Art Institute of Chicago, among other schools, and was the retired planning director for Winston-Salem and Forsyth County. He and other local artists founded Artworks Gallery in 1984. In recognition of his contributions to the local arts community, Artworks is holding a special memorial exhibit of his work from Jan. 2-28. A silent auction of his work will be held during a closing reception from 2 to 4 p.m. on Jan. 28.

Finally, local artist Ann Carter Pollard died in July after several years of illness and declining health. She was a founding member of the Five Winston-Salem Printmakers, a group that was prominent in the region during the 1970s and ‘80s, and at various times taught in the art departments of Salem College and Wake Forest University. In keeping with her quiet, unassuming personality, her death passed without significant notice, and I heard nothing about it until several weeks after a memorial service was held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.