Mission accomplished. The Museum of Modern Art's wide-open tall-ceilinged super-reinforced second floor was for all intents and purposes built to accommodate monumental installations and gigantic sculptures should the need arise. It has arisen.
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.
It's great that New York has large spaces for art. But the enormous immaculate box has become a dated even oppressive place. Many of these spaces were designed for sprawling installations large paintings and the Relational Aesthetics work of the past fifteen years.
During the Cold War we were interested because we were scared that Russia and the United States were going to go to war. We were scared that Russia was going to take over the world. Every country became a battleground.