It is always bad news when our art museums find new ways to subvert the purposes for which they were created. Nowadays the ways are so many and so varied, ranging from the crassest commercialization to the most flagrant politicization. Soon we shall need special guides designed to advise museumgoers on what to avoid at these institutions if their primary goal is to look at actual works of art—the “originals,” as we now call the objects that artists have made in order to distinguish them from the plethora of counterfeits that museums currently expend so much energy in promoting. Picasso on a coffee mug, Rembrandt on a T-shirt, Monet on bed sheets, and Matisse by the yard: it’s a wonder that we haven’t yet seen Van Gogh’s ear reproduced in the form of a garnet brooch. And all this is in the name of advancing an appreciation of fine art.

Now, owing to advances in computer techn ...

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