Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

A standard line, promoted by people like Clement Greenberg,.. is that politics contaminates art, and Manet is often cited as an example of art for art's sake.

What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.

Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

Museums are not normally presenting the works on the walls as provocations to work. It's more like going to a Jacuzzi.

Trivializing the Holocaust is the last thing I want to do.

A liberal public is interesting to have as an audience. It is for that very reason that corporations make such an effort to ally themselves with cultural institutions.