When money and hype recede from the art world, one thing I won't miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami ca... — Jerry Saltz

When money and hype recede from the art world, one thing I won't miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami calls the 'Eventocracy.' All this flashy 'art-fair art' and those highly produced space-eating spectacles and installations wow you for a minute until you move on to the next adrenaline event.

Author: Jerry Saltz

Insight: We've all felt that buzz: the Instagram-worthy installation, the limited-edition drop, the exclusive event that feels like you're in on something. It delivers a jolt of excitement that's genuinely real in the moment. But Saltz is pointing at something many people sense but rarely name—that the thrill dissolves almost immediately, like sugar hitting your system. You move through the space, capture it, share it, and it's already fading from your mind. The spectacle was built to be consumed quickly, not to settle into you. What's tricky is that this hunger for the next thing isn't really about art or events anymore. It's become a baseline way we move through culture and even our own lives. We're trained to expect constant novelty, constant production value, constant stakes. The non-spectacular—a single painting you return to, a quiet idea that unfolds slowly—starts feeling boring by comparison, even if it actually changes how you think. Saltz's real point isn't that flashy things are bad. It's that when spectacle becomes the main event, we lose room for anything that works differently: the subtle, the patient, the thing that asks something of you rather than just grabbing your attention. When the hype recedes, that's when we might notice what actually stuck around.