
Installation view of Gallery 10 in MoMA’s second-floor Contemporary Galleries. Photo © 2013 Jonathan Muzikar
When I was in graduate school studying art history, we used to joke about the “this looks like this” problem that we perceived as running rampant in the field. Stated simply, the problem is that it’s very easy to find visual similarities between objects that really have nothing historically, contextually, or subjectively to do with each other.