(Photo: David Rager/Courtesy of the New Museum)

Debut
The New Museum
Its boxy new Bowery home may feel slick to some, and it looks too small to me. But the new New Museum represents (and is the product of) great institutional ambition, and opened with the unglitzy, sincere show “Unmonumental.” Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it all clicks.

Stinker
Richard Prince
The Hoist by His Own Petard prize goes to Prince for his installation at the Frieze Art Fair in London, for which he hired a buxom girl in a bikini to pose next to a muscle car he designed. Like so many artists these days, Prince was attempting to game the system, but as in most cases, the system ended up gaming him. There was no way to look at this attention-getting attempt at being cagey and cool and not feel put-off. Having seen that picture, one even felt that Prince’s retrospective at the Guggenheim disintegrated a little bit.

Related:

• Archive: “Arts and Culture”
• Articles by Jerry Saltz
• Table of Contents: Dec 17, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!