Yesterday, along a MeetUp group, we visited several art galleries in Chelsea (NY): Mike Weiss Gallery, Gladstone Gallery, Luhring Augustine Gallery, Metro Pictures Gallery, The Pace Gallery, and Mary Boone Gallery.

Leaving my personal comments on the displayed works aside (as usual, the pleasure of this kind of pilgrimage is to leave your mind and senses open, and let the works and stimuli slowly sink in), one thing surprised me quite a lot: Ai Wei Wei‘s work Sunflower Seeds was supposed to be walked on (at least it did at the Tate Modern in London, for the first 10 days of the exhibit), but at Mary Boone Gallery there is a security guard that prevents visitors from doing exactly what the artist intended.

Ai Wei Wei’s Sunflower Seeds © Mary Boone Gallery

After discussing this with the gallerys official, I understand that the Tate has many more resources, and can afford to re-arrange the seeds every so often, and Mary Boone cant. But, in that case, are they distorting what the artist intended? Up to what point a DIFFERENT work is being displayed?

Art, if it does not make you feel or think… it isn`t. Some would say.

To top it all off, dinner at Blossom was impeccable.