Before I write another word, I have to admit that — more than usual — I've no idea what I'm talking about. All I know is, after yesterday, I will never be able to look at a woman in high heels the same way. Without some kind of awe.

How sad. Just twelve years after it was built on W. 53rd Street next to MoMA, the former American Folk Art Museum is going to be torn down by its new owner: MoMA. What’s sad is not that the building is going; it’s that, despite near-universal rave reviews for its architecture, it was doomed to death as an art museum from the beginning. As soon as the Tod Williams and Billie Tsien–designed building opened, it was obvious to anyone interested in it primarily as a museum that the interior spaces were absolutely unusable for the purpose of showing art. The galleries were cramped and the interior was filled with staircases, which were sometimes accompanied by corridorlike spaces and other awkward nooks for art.

Gallery shows: light of my life, fire of my eyes. I love and long for them. I see maybe 30 a week, every week of the year. Much of what I know about contemporary art I learned from hanging around artists and from going to galleries. Bad shows teach me as much as good ones. A great thing about galleries—especially for someone who spends most of his time alone at a computer, typing—is that they’re social spaces, collective séances, campfires where anyone can gather. I’m a blabbermouth, so in galleries I turn to strangers and blurt whatever I’m thinking about whatever we’re looking at. If they don’t think I’m a creepy geezer, they’ll tell me what they’re thinking, too. Then I see whole new things. As disembodied as they can be, galleries are places where one can commune with the group mind. We have more of them than any other city does, and admission is free.