Being mean to collectors

“Thanks to the Armory Show, several big art accumulators in town graciously “open their homes” so other Armory-affiliated VIPs can check out their stuff. Here’s the protocol: You show up and wander around their art-filled pad strictly for connoisseurship purposes - sometimes the collectors make themselves available for chitchat and offer coffee, sometimes not—all the while pretending not to notice that what you’re really marvelling at is the money that enables these people to live in their own private kunsthalles. It’s a passive-aggressive display of conspicuous consumption exalted by the noble calling of art patronage. Who could resist? These people are to contemporary art what Imelda Marcos was to shoes.” - Rhonda Lieberman at a collector's open house – Artforum diary.
Image: The shoes, now housed at the Shoe Museum in Marikina, the "Shoe Capital of the Philippines".