``Art is what people define as art....to be seen as Capital A aret, there always had to be gatekeepers...''
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The first part is right, but that changes the second part which is mostly wrong. Here's how.
I like what I like as art. There fore I don't need a gatekeeper. Because I grew up around the arts I never depended on a taste maker or gatekeeper to define art for me. It was always immediately accesible either wet in the living room or well dried in giant art books. Gatekeepers only work for those who think they want to know something about art that they can't quite figure out for themselves.
I'll try a more nuanced criticism of Doug's friend's essay later tonight.
But in the meantime his worries over the status of the Morgan are misplaced. The problem is that all museums have struggled for decades to keep open, keep alive in the neoliberal era. It's no surprize that even great institutions will whore themselves for a buck. That's all part of the consequences of neoliberal capitalism on steroids---the virtual death of public life, public commons, etc. There is no asethetic crisis required to understand the current apparent trivilization of an already diminished art world. Of course it is an imitation, a kind of off-shore clone done on the cheap. The whole society is that way, why not the art world?
CG