If you think a museum’s responsibility ends with the gallery space, you probably consider the lived experience of the orcas irrelevant to your enjoyment of SeaWorld
Not much news from the art world pierces the mediasphere, and if it does, it tends to revolve around money—either ludicrously high auction prices or flashy new erections by starchitects. The Guston kerfuffle, on the other hand, has something for everyone cheesed off by the “Intolerant Left”: the beleaguered white male genius, the specter of cancel culture, mealy-mouthed PR-speak.
These kinds of contrasts give rise to history understood as a morass of unresolved conflicts and multiple lines of flight, rather than a unified tale of artistic development. Of course, none of the current constellations break new ground or present innovative scholarship—that is still a step too far for even #newMoMA—but they renounce the egregious evasions that were previously MoMA’s calling card.
