The Groove 229 - The Real Reason the Art World Feels Broken
Welcome to the 229th issue of The Groove.
I am Maria Brito, an art advisor, curator, and author based in New York City.
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THE REAL REASON THE ART WORLD FEELS BROKEN
Everyone says they want risk, innovation, and meaning in art.
So why do we keep rewarding mediocrity, mirrored rooms, and Instagram traps disguised as “immersive experiences”?
Let’s talk about the Kool-Aid we’ve been drinking.
The Kool-Aid Chronicles
The Van Gogh immersive experience.
A recent New York Times op-ed titled “The Studio Knows the Real Reason Movies Are Bad” hit a nerve. Because this isn’t just in Hollywood - every creative industry has been commodified and diluted by fear, algorithms, and audience-pleasing fluff. The author, screenwriter Zack Stentz, explains that even well-meaning film executives find themselves gutting good scripts to fit what data says will sell. Their crime isn’t malice. It’s passivity. It’s cowardice wrapped in nostalgia for when movies were actually good.
That op-ed was sparked by The Studio, a darkly funny satire created by Seth Rogen for Apple TV. The series follows Matt Remick (played by Rogen), the sweet but clueless new head of a major Hollywood studio who genuinely loves cinema yet keeps approving soul-crushing, IP-driven garbage.
Remick dreams of making great films like Goodfellas, but ends up attaching Martin Scorsese to a Kool-Aid biopic. It’s absurd. And yet… painfully real. What makes the show sting is that Remick isn’t a villain. He wants to do the right thing but keeps folding to market pressure, risk-averse bosses, and the algorithm.
If it sounds familiar, it’s because it mirrors what’s happening in the art world.
The Rise of Immersive Spectacles
There’s a reason that Immersive Van Gogh and its kaleidoscopic cousins have been booked solid while many gallery shows and biennials struggle for attendance. These aren’t art experiences, they’re content: designed for selfies, built to sell merch, optimized to feed the algorithm. And let’s be honest: they’re crowd-pleasers. You don’t have to know anything about art to enjoy 40-foot sunflowers moving in sync to a Hans Zimmer knockoff soundtrack.
But the danger here isn’t just that it’s low-brow; the issue is that museums, once the last bastions of deep engagement, are chasing this same model. If the goal becomes “get bodies in the room,” then art gets flattened into entertainment. Context is dropped, complexity is edited out, and nuance is sacrificed to spectacle.
It’s not that immersive experiences are inherently bad, but when they dominate the institutional calendar, what gets lost is the kind of art that asks for your time, your patience, and your trust.
The Collector Conundrum
Here’s where it gets even thornier. Many collectors say they want to be challenged, to discover the next great artist, to build something meaningful. But in practice, the money still flows toward what’s safe, branded, and easily digestible. The same names get bought and sold repeatedly - not because the work is always relevant, but because someone else bought it first, and no one wants to be left out. It’s intellectual FOMO dressed up as taste.
We see $400,000 paintings by artists who were unknown five years ago and keep copying one another being flipped within a season, while braver, more original work languishes unsold. We see advisors pushing “investment-grade” art like it’s a diversified fund, and collectors following their lead like analysts chasing the next stock tip.
And just like in the movie world, there are brilliant, fearless works from artists that are gathering dust because the system won’t bet on anything untested.
Museums: Between Education and Entertainment
Museums, once imagined as sanctuaries for cultural memory and critical thinking, now find themselves competing with social media, short attention spans, and commercial sponsorships. To financially survive and remain “relevant,” many museums are prioritizing blockbuster shows that guarantee foot traffic even if it means programming the same artists over and over again.
The shift from education to entertainment isn’t always obvious, but you can feel it. Audio guides have become marketing reels. Wall labels get shorter, vaguer, and sometimes avoid saying anything at all. There’s less curatorial voice, less interpretation, and more spectacle.
It’s easier to mount a big, familiar retrospective than to take a risk on someone with no auction track record. Museums once told us what mattered. Now they’re often asking us what we’ll click on. The problem? We usually click on fluff.
A Call for Authentic Engagement
Do we blame the market? The audience? The algorithms? Maybe all of the above but also ourselves. The art world needs to stop pretending it’s immune to the same forces that flattened Hollywood and turned music into TikTok snippets. If we want to preserve depth, experimentation, and surprise, we need to reward it.
Collectors need to take risks again. Institutions need to defend curatorial freedom. And artists need to resist the urge to become influencers first, visionaries second.
There’s still hope. We’ve seen what happens when great work gets the support it deserves; when museums mount shows that challenge us, when collectors champion good artists early, when risk is rewarded instead of punished. But it takes guts. It takes turning away from the shiny things and doubling down on the strange, the slow, the difficult, and the new.
So What’s Next?
The tragedy isn’t that art has changed. The tragedy is that the people who love it most - museum directors, collectors, dealers, advisors, audiences - have stopped trusting the art to carry its own weight.
We keep saying we want meaning, but we fund mediocrity. We say we want innovation, but we chase what’s already proven. Just like in The Studio, the executives aren’t villains, they’re just scared.
But here’s the thing: the art doesn’t have to change.
We do.