My WNYC podcast on Murakami is now online here, or you can click it below. I never know for sure how it will be edited, so I’m glad they kept my comment that I have no objection to Brooklyn’s displaying the Vuitton products (or even, for that matter, replicating a store).
I only object to its being a FUNCTIONAL store—an external commercial enterprise inappropriately introduced into a nonprofit museum. What happens when the next artist insists that part of HIS art is allowing his own dealer to set up shop in the middle of the retrospective, selling objects just like those in the show (or even some that are IN the show)? That would be a smart commercial move, lousy museum policy.
Here’s the podcast, to be followed by another post, comparing the effect of the exhibition in Brooklyn with that in its organizing venue, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art: