Pardon Our Dust

Okay, admittedly this is a Gap commercial, of all things, and extrapolating large life lessons from it might be a little lame and more than a bit misguided, but it got me thinking about the role of art--as in: is the ultimate goal of art always to shake up our private worlds and ways of experiencing things, to let us mentally knock over a mannequin in the middle of a department store, so to say? And what about our arts institutions? Do we need them to be the staunch, quiet pillars and white walls of unchanging non-intrusive presentation, or could they use a radical redecoration in the way they do business as well? (Not that I'm suggesting we necessarily get extreme about it.)

Speaking of stirring up the dust, the NEA's own Rocco throws a hypothetical punch behind agency support for artistic areas such as hip-hop and graffiti. Cool, right? Gawker explains why this may not be such a great idea.