Since my last essay in this space attempted to adumbrate the principle for would-be censors, we have seen a spectacular illustration of the truth that meaning depends on context—and of a characteristic political obtuseness in understanding it. In fact, the “Sensation” exhibit at Brooklyn Museum, discussed in detail by Roger Kimball elsewhere in these pages, takes us to the very limits of that principle, to the point at which there is no meaning apart from context. We have long been used to the postmodern definition of “art,” which is that art is anything displayed as such in an art gallery or museum. The context is all, the content nothing. Yet somehow it still takes us by surprise every time another collection of worthless junk is packaged as art—given a context—precisely so as to create a sensation: even when the packagers advertise their purposes by calling it “Sensation.” We seem unable to refrain from re ...

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