Peter Schjeldahl's latest piece is a Must Read. It's one of those rare occasions where the critic's analysis of the show is more worth while and telling than the exhibition itself. The long and short of it is, the second artists start making gestures at becoming very serious again we suddenly expect the work to transcend all of the museum blockbusters and art fairs that have lowered the level of expectations for art during the past decade. Finally, PS has taken on younger artists instead of his typically brilliant laurel wreaths for the likes of Bruce Nauman and Ed Ruscha. We know those guys are good, what we want now is a new crop with a similar level of rigor and achievement.

On a more regional level (but not strictly so), I'll be on Oregon Public Broadcasting's Think Out Loud tomorrow at 9:00 AM with curator Jennifer Gately, Dan Attoe and Richard Speer to discuss the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards and their impact on the regional art scene (though artists like Attoe have pretty bitch'n international careers already so it opens some complicated and impossible to categorize discussions of regionalism in an internationally decentralized art world).