A three-dimensional sensibility is at work at the Guggenheim’s first ever artist-curated exhibition, Artistic License: Six Takes on the Guggenheim Collection.  The first dimension is the initial shock of the viewer confronting the artworks; the second is the awareness as you move from one selection to the next, that there’s another mind, the curator’s, at work.  The third dimension as you move through the six levels of the rotunda, is the merging of the viewer’s take along with the curator’s own into a rich, sometimes disorienting, dizzying impression.

Constructing memorials to those lost in conflict requires simultaneously painting with both a broad and fine-toothed brush (metaphorically speaking). The artist should not ignore nuanced suffering, yet the main goal is at the service of events that affect people en masse. While Doris Salcedo’s pieces, focusing on the Colombian Civil War, do not employ the typical tropes of memorials, they are still imbued with the sensitivity required of them due to her process and personal history, having lost family members to the conflict.

In another great departure from convention, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has mounted the comprehensive retrospective of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, rewriting the playbook for how an exhibition of this kind ought to be done. Cattelan has become famous in the art world for his irreverent sense of humor and penchant for artistic high jinks.  He has made a career out of defying expectations.