THE SHOCK OF THE NEW
by Charlie Finch



Lately, the New Museum of Contemporary Art has been in the news and the blogosphere for all the wrong reasons. There have been woolly headed debates about the NuMu's courtship of collector Dakis Joannou, criticisms of Jeff Koons' slipshod curation of Dakis' holdings in the "Skin Fruit" show, a firestorm over NuMu curator Richard Flood's Whack-A-Mole characterization of art bloggers as "prairie dogs" (i.e. pop-up rodents). Even the awarding of the Pritzker Prize to the Japanese team that built the NuMu's new Bowery space is controversial, because, let's face it, the New NuMu has all the charm of a parking garage.

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