Art Museums Are Becoming Addicted To Blockbuster Shows: Felix Salmon

“Major event” exhibitions like the Yayoi Kusama Infinity Mirrors show and the traveling David Bowie Is show “achieve two important goals for any museum: They increase attendance, and they increase revenue. But … blockbusters effectively ratchet up expectations everywhere, to the point at which lower-budget affairs can no longer capture the public imagination. That’s bad for most museums, and it’s bad for the public, too, which will increasingly subsist on the cultural equivalent of junk food.”