Walking around Chelsea on a weekday afternoon looking at galleries is one of my favorite NYC pastimes. Each time I go, I spend 80% of the time shaking my head at the absolute and utter crap on display at many of NY's fine galleries. I do see a few good things each time, which counterbalance the crap. And then...there's always something that just blows you away. On this past Friday's jaunt, it was Maya Lin's "2 x 4 Landscape" at Pace Wildenstein. Please go, so you can understand what it means to be a great artist. To see work by someone who so understands artistic execution and dedication to an ideal. You should poke your head in, as I did, to at least a few dozen other galleries, so you can compare the worldview, intelligence, and creativity of Maya Lin to all the other work, a little bit which is good but not particularly close, and a lot of which is probably meant well but isn't anything even vaguely like what Ms. Lin accomplishes here. But that's what great artists are here for--to inspire all of us, even other artists.

Photo:  Rob Tallia