In class on Thursday we began by by discussing the problems with the modern museum’s emphasis on the individual artist. We talked about how this makes folks gravitate towards art done only by the people whose names they recognize, and this led to a conversation about anonymous artists. Professor Plesch implored us to think about how many of these anonymous artists were women, and I began to think about all the art that our culture has not engaged with in the way we have engaged with works by famous male European artists. We went off on a fabulous tangent about the art market, and I learned a lot about the manipulation of prices in art auctions, which made me think a lot about the perceived value of works we treasure as a society. I wonder how some of these famous works rose to their present levels of heady fame and the reasons why they surpassed works by anonymous artists. I think that the glorification of the artist in the modern museum has a lot to do with the extraordinary fame of artists and particular works of art.