«I LIKE EVERYBODY'S ART»

DAMIEN HIRST

Apparently fabricated in a perverse effort to one-up his own prodigious earnings at auction, artist Damien Hirst constructed one of the most memorable artworks of the aughts. “For the Love of God” , a platinum-and-diamond-encrusted skull, allegedly sold for the jaw-dropping price of nearly $100 million in 2007, seemed to some to symbolize the excessive expenditures of a decade — and the arbitrariness of contemporary art valuations. Turns out the “consortium” that purchased the piece included Hirst as a member.

COLLECTOR MUSEUMS

Prominent collectors, perhaps emboldened by the skyrocketing value of their holdings on paper during the ’00s, opted to build their own museums (or exhibition venues) in lieu of handing over control of their collections to existing institutions. Miami’s now robust scene owes much to this trend: the Rubell Family Collection, Margulies Collection at the Warehouse and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation are all fantastic places to visit. In LA, philanthropist Eli Broad partnered with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to create the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, which opened in 2008.

COMMERCIAL CULTURE AS HIGH ART

Accessibility — in the sense of appealing to potential visitors with comfortable, popular content (as opposed to obscure, conceptual premises) — has become something of a mantra for museums in the 21st century. The effort to bridge pop culture and the museum may have culminated with the Brooklyn Museum’s 2002 tribute to Star Wars, complete with costume displays and Death Star graphics, but that institution wasn’t the only one to perpetuate the phenomenon. In 2000, the esteemed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hosted an exhibition devoted to the work of fashion designer Giorgio Armani. And our own Tampa Museum of Art hosted a showcase of New York Yankees memorabilia in 2005.

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