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But Is It Art?
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Haughty decrees are one of the French state's specialties. In a proclamation issued in April 1999, Minister for Culture Cathérine Trautmann announced her intention to create a new exhibition space in Paris for young artists modeled on existing centers in London, Amsterdam, Berlin and New York in an attempt to revive the French capital's flagging reputation on the international contemporary art circuit. This delicate mission was entrusted to Nicolas Bourriaud and Jérôme Sans, a pair of maverick art critics and exhibition curators who wowed the faceless bureaucrats at the Culture Ministry with a proposal teeming with 21st century buzzwords....