“LOVE IT HATE IT DON’T MISS IT” reads the
advertisement, as seen in New York City subway trains, for the
1997 Whitney Biennial. Judging from the crowds milling through the
Whitney, the majority of visitors
who have answered that call seem to be merely curiosity seekers for whom
museum
exhibitions are less about art than fashion.
(“Be there or be square” is the show’s underlying motto.)
The Biennial has, of
course, lost whatever relevance it may once have had as a
serious overview of contemporary American art. As a measure
of the Zeitgeist, however, it is all too reliable. Suffice it
to say that a show which has visitors pondering whether the
“No Smoking” signs in the stairwell are works of art is one
whose focus is, shall we say, lacking in aesthetic
discrimination.

Curmudgeonly words, I know, and just a
smattering of those
dedicated to this predictably maligned event. Still, there have been
reasons not to feel curmudgeonly about the New York
art scene. Recently, a handful of gallery exhibitions offered a
reminder of how vital an art capital New York can be. A few
of the shows discussed below are of such quality that they
merit full-scale museum treatments, and all of them call into
question assumptions of what constitutes a viable American
art, as well as that art’s history. An exhibition of Richard
Stankiewicz’s sculptures from the 1950s, in particular, made much of what is considered
major postwar American sculpture seem