Museum as Romantic Comedy

First off, I'd like to point out the title. Who would ever think that a museum is like a romantic comedy. haha but really, humor takes part in this a lot. I found this article on the New York Times, and I thought that it was quite intriguing. It's a matter of seeing something differently than what you are used to perceiving.
If you’re going to make elusive art that often looks like life, it certainly helps to do it inside a powerful work of art. You also could question the decision by Nancy Spector, the museum’s chief curator and the show’s organizer, to reconvene a group of usual suspects, who are also something of a clique, to represent a widespread, complex phenomenon sometimes put under the scary chapter heading “relational aesthetics.”
The goal of “relational aesthetics” is less to overthrow the museum than to turn it upside down, wreaking temporary havoc with its conventions and the visitor’s expectations of awe-inspiring objects by revered masters. The larger point is to resensitize people to their everyday surroundings and, moreover, to one another in a time when so much — technology, stress, shopping — conspires against human connection.

The artists in this show and others like them extend a tradition of museum subversions that began with Conceptual Art in the 1970s and gained savvy and momentum with the institutional-critique phenomenon of the late 1980s. Emerging in the mid-1990s, the relational artists favored a more carefree approach that featured ephemeral situations, functional objects (often involving seating), architectural follies, amusing signage, elegant or arcane graphic design, performances, freebies (including food) and loosely planned group events.

Original Article