overease

I don't know how it is that I just heard about this, but...the Art Institute of Chicago has ended voluntary "suggested donation" admission and instituted mandatory ticket prices. I knew I was suspicious of all those demographic studies that were supposed to show how much economic value museums contribute to cities. Since museum visitors have been "found to be disproportionately white, educated and affluent," I guess that's all the impetus they need to give up on the twentieth-century notion of the museum as democratic space. Of course, that's a notion the museum never really lived up to. But the giving up of the notion itself seems noteworthy. Even symbolically speaking, we don't care about democracy anymore.

In the course of "researching" (ha!) this post, I thought I'd check in and see what the folks at $20 MOMA are doing.

Sigh.

dada is dead. long live dada!