ART WORLD AFTER THE CRASH: LEANER, MEANER CLEANER

WHAT will the art world be like a year from now? In five years? These unspoken questions seem to hang in the air these days over art fairs and galleries of every size and persuasion.

One answer is that it will be smaller, leaner and, many assume, cleaner. All that supposedly nasty money and degrading hoopla will have faded. And to think it all began to unravel so quickly after two memorable milestones of sorts: the adrenaline-pumping Damien Hirst auction in London in September and the spectacle of a Louis Vuitton shop within the exhibition space of a Takashi Murakami survey that traveled in spring from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to the Brooklyn Museum...MORE