If you had gone to the Suburban Gallery in April 2001, you would have found several famous objects.  Catalan's foos ball was there, so was a facsimile of Martin Creed's Work no. 79, some Blu-Tak kneaded, rolled into a ball and depressed against the wall.  The gallery hosted Chuck Mutscheller's show entitled "Taking Liberties."  Mutscheller displayed a group of objects that he had gathered or stolen from different exhibitions over the past few years.  Not entire art objects, but pieces of art objects.  This again brings up the question of where the art resides.  Is it in the art object as a whole?  Is it what the object refers to?  If Mutscheller had been arrested, would he have been charged with a felony (requiring that the value of what he was stealing exceeded 100 dollars), or would it be misdemeanor, or would it be worthy of attention at all?

Mutscheller did not price the objects in his show.  Their value was up for question.  Not just their monetary value, but their value as objects that might or might not convey meaning.  It is always dangerous to ask questions.  People get uncomfortable, and institutions tend to react badly.  Curiosity killed the cat, and in this case it also lost Mutscheller his job as editor at The Art Institute of Chicago.  The story of Mutscheller's dismissal is unclear at best.  It centers around one object featured in "Taking Liberties."  Through a source that Mutscheller chooses to keep secret, he managed to get a bootleg copy of Rineke Dijkstra's video, The Buzzclub.  James Rondeau, colleague of Mutscheller's at The Art Institute of Chicago, found out about it and apparently was deeply disturbed by Mutscheller's use of the video.  Coincidentally, Rondeau had been working on organizing a show of Rineke Dijkstra's work, the first solo museum show of Dijkstra to be presented in America.  It was scheduled to open on April 11, 2001.  Mutscheller's show opened March 24, 2001.

Rondeau reported Mutscheller not only to his superiors at The Art Institute but also to Dijkstra's gallery, Marion Goodman, in New York.  He also called long distance to Paris to tell Jim Wood, the director of The Art Institute, of Mutscheller's crimes. By reporting these events Rondeau created a volatile situation.  Surely he had some questionable motives, but that aside, Rondeau managed to place The Art Institute in a difficult position.  If The Art Institute chose to support Mutscheller, or even to overlook his transgression, it could jeopardize the museum's relationship with the Marion Goodman Gallery.  Meanwhile, thanks to Rondeau's heads-up, the Marion Goodman Gallery had decided to sue the Suburban Gallery for its role in presenting Mutscheller's show.

The plumber never sued Duchamp.  Had he tried, he might have found it difficult to establish damages.  The law has difficulty recognizing an object's worth, especially an art object.  For example, I had a friend who was arrested for the production of child pornography.  When all of her work was confiscated from her gallery, the police appraised it according to how much an 11 inch by 14 inch or 20 inch by 24 inch photo print would cost at Walgreen's. Once the museums and galleries get involved, all objects are transformed into products.  It is no longer a video, it is a unit of production, and in this transformation the art loses its voice.  The art, like a child, is something to be seen and not heard.  All motives and intentions are homogenized into monetary terms.  What Dijkstra thinks about Mutscheller's gesture, whether the context in which it was shown mitigates the circumstances, whether there is anything learned, gained or lost, is no longer the issue.  All of these things are superseded by money and the fear of money lost.

Consider the difference between the Marion Goodman Gallery's reaction to "Taking Liberties" and that of the Jan Mot Gallery in Belgium.  The Jon Mot Gallery also represents Dijkstra.  Upon hearing of Mutscheller's show, Jan Mot himself flew to America, saw the show, and then interviewed Mutscheller for his gallery's newsletter.  Mot spoke very highly of the show and used it as an opportunity to investigate various questions about art collection, the exchange of money, and the gallery system.  In this way, Mot embraced the fundamental aspect of Mutscheller's show, that of investigation and of asking questions.

It is the asking of questions that is the most threatening.  Socrates was not killed for making statements, but for asking questions.  In a speech that John F. Kennedy delivered at the founding ceremonies for the NEA, he stated that: "The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the nation's greatness ... but the men who question power [artists] make a contribution just as indispensable ...  I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.  If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him."

J.S. Boggs once said that he would have stopped the drudgery of drawing all that money long ago, but it keeps bringing up more interesting questions.  Maurizio Catalan once asked people to steal art and then clandestinely place it in a museum.  He claimed that once taken from its original context and placed in another, the artwork became his.  Salvador Dali signed blank canvases, and Yves Kline sold empty space as a potential artwork.

Had you wanted to buy an album by N-Sync you could have saved your money and gone to Napster.com, but that is no longer possible.  Again, it is a matter of use value and how an object is meant to function.  According to corporate logic music is not for listening, it's for selling.  It is almost a sort of alchemy.  McDonald's doesn't make hamburgers for us to eat, in fact the food they sell is toxic.  As objects their hamburgers are meant to be sold, not eaten.  Art is subject to the same phenomenon.  It has to do not only with the pace at which information is exchanged, but the nature of how that information is viewed.  We are in what some people refer to as the Information Age.  If we look at the Internet or at consulting firms we see that information is quickly becoming commodified.  If information becomes a commodity , it will go the way of the Big Mac.  It will become a highly processed, relatively useless product whose only purpose is to be sold. 

One aspect of Duchamp's readymades that is rarely discussed is their relationship to products.  The readymades were made during the same time that department stores first appeared.  The department store was a warehouse of readymades.  It was where the first ready-to-wear clothing was sold.  The readymades may have been a comment about art's identity, but they also made reference to production and the increasing role it played in the twentieth century. Production is now the center of our culture.  The viewpoints of production and consumption overwhelm other voices.  If there is to be any discussion or examination of the system of production, the floor must be open to voices that reach beyond the system's rules.  Mutscheller's gesture is one of many that contribute to a vital discussion concerning the nature of objects in our culture.