Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

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

Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.

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

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

There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis.