In bluntest terms, art museums risk being commercial institutions in which art is subsumed by economics and the experience of looking at art becomes a form of consumption.

Don't go to a museum with a destination. Museums are wormholes to other worlds. They are ecstasy machines.

This one is going to be shown in museums. It's an art film.

It's a heady feeling. Museums around the world are buying [contemporary Chinese art], Chinese collectors have begun to get seriously interested and even funds are being created to buy it. This is Chinese art's moment.

We've always been among the very finest college art museums in the South and probably America. But now, it's like a new ball game. Everything has doubled. I think it will be a more prominent cultural venue for Central Florida.

I used to wonder: Do only ignorant laypeople gaze on the colossal bust of Ramses II at the British Museum and ask themselves how it ended up there? Is it only the unschooled visitor who looks at the soaring column from the Temple of Artemis at the Met and questions why it exists in this place?