Among living artists, George Condo may be the most embraced by the powers that be.

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

I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.

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.

I've always said that an art critic can put aside politics around art.

Galleries needn't be exactly like White Columns purely because times are bad again. But the idea of this special space could - should - help shape what comes next.

Yes, 85 percent of the art you see isn't any good. But everyone has a different opinion about which 85 percent is bad. That in turn creates fantastically unstable interplay and argument.