Last weekend I decided to head to Chicago to get in some quality schlepping and museum going while I still have the time to be a little self indulgent and quiet. I have 2 months left in my life to have my choices be just about me and I chose to spend few leisurely hours in the MCA . While I normally thoroughly enjoy immersing my senses in this amazing space, I left feeling so frustrated with the Rudolf Stingel exhibit and the state of modern art installations in general. While Stingel is very tactile, his installations focused on leaving the creation of the art to the viewer. While this can be brilliant in other manifestations, his attempt felt lazy. In the main hall, Stingel put up panels of styrofoam covered in aluminum foil, for museum goers to doodle on. It seemed to be lacking thought, inspiration, and when I go to a museum to see art, I really want to experience something that I am not capable of, I want to see something provocative, something that caused the artist a bit of agony to produce; not walls full of “Katie was here” or doodled peace symbols. Further into his exhibit, Stingel hung a large piece of sand colored carpeting on the wall for viewers again to doodle on with their fingers, when asked, the museum’s volunteer tour guide admitted that carpet came from Empire , it was just so ridiculous to me, so uninspired, like he was too tired to really think of something. What is most unbelievable to me, is that this exhibit will be heading to the Whitney. It seems to make a statement about what the masses consider genius, or about how lazy our culture has become, that we don’t really even expect our artists to agonize over their works or push the limits of the human mind. It is just so sad to me that these are the kind of works that major galleries are taking notice of, that this is what the population will go to admire. The world is full of starving artists, struggling over their works, having their pieces inflict such anguish upon them, it must be such a blow to the gut to have some artist get the main hall in the MCA and hang a cheap piece of carpet on it.