My culture-deprived, aspirational mother dragged me once a month from our northern suburb - where the word art never came up - to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hated it.

The art world is an all-volunteer force. No one has to be here if he or she doesn't want to be, and we should be associating with anyone we want to.

I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.

The Met is not only the finest encyclopedic museum of art in the United States; it is arguably the finest anywhere.

The last time money left the art world, intrepid types maxed out their credit cards and opened galleries, and a few of them have become the best in the world.

I don't plan out my visits rigorously, but I do have a list of about 125 New York galleries, alternative spaces, museums, and so forth that I visit regularly. That's the closest thing I have to a strategy: I go to a lot of places, many that artists don't visit.

First let me report that the art in the Barnes Collection has never looked better. My trips to the old Barnes were always amazing, but except on the sunniest days, you could barely see the art. The building always felt pushed beyond its capacity.