Continuing a tradition that we began in December 2001, we have devoted a large part of this expanded issue of The New Criterion to the visual arts. Michael J. Lewis opens the issue with “Architecture After Modernism,” his brilliant contribution to “Lengthened Shadows,” our year-long series on American institutions in the twenty-first century. In addition to a bumper crop of exhibition reviews, this issue also includes “In the Kitchen of Art,” a splendid essay on art conservation by the distinguished conservator and art dealer Marco Grassi, and a conversation between the figurative painter William Bailey and the poet Mark Strand. In different ways, these pieces take us deep into the workshop of art: Mr. Grassi’s into some of its technical aspects, Messrs. Bailey and Strand’s into some aesthetic and historical issues. Mr. Bailey reflects partly on the evolution of his own work, partly on the contemporary art ...

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