EXCERPT WHAT IS THE VALUE OF CONTEMPORARY ART? What is the point of asking this question? i. To justify the existence of art institutions. ii. To critique the character of the institutions we have. Any account of the value of contemporary art that’s indexed to the interests of these institutions can’t play this critical role, and so can’t be expected to play a justificatory role either. Any account of what contemporary art is that indexes it to institutional validation precludes a satisfactory account of its value. This means that, in order to ask about the value of contemporary art, we have no choice but to ask about its essence. The problem here is not simply that contemporary art is difficult to define, but that this difficulty concerns its fraught relationship with its essence. Contemporary art is haunted by the question of what it is, sometimes obsessed by it and sometimes outright hostile to it, but never truly free from it.…