The Alchemy Of Good Curating Amounts To

Can Space Break? I Mean The Space Of Art Galleries. Over The Past 100 Years, Art Galleries Have Gone From Looking Like Beaux Arts Salons To Simple Storefronts To Industrial Lofts To The Gleaming Giant White Cubes Of Chelsea With Their Shiny Concrete Floors.

Now People Look At 'the Scream' Or Van Gogh's 'irises' Or A Picasso And See Its New Content: Money. Auction Houses Inherently Equate Capital With Value.

Imagine It's 1981. You're An Artist, In Love With Art, Smitten With Art History. You're Also A Woman, With Almost No Mentors To Look To; Art History Just Isn't That Into You. Any Woman Approaching Art History In The Early Eighties Was Attempting To Enter An Almost Foreign Country, A Restricted And Exclusionary Domain That Spoke A Private Language.

Certainty Sees Things In Restrictive, Protective, Aggressive Ways, And Thus Isn't Seeing At All.

When Money And Hype Recede From The Art World, One Thing I Won't Miss Will Be What Curator Francesco Bonami Calls The 'eventocracy.' All This Flashy 'art-fair Art' And Those Highly Produced Space-eating Spectacles And Installations Wow You For A Minute Until You Move On To The Next Adrenaline Event.