Did the exhibition committee at Brooklyn Museum make a serious attempt to understand the Japanese art community or popular culture? Or did they just see Murakami mentioned in Wired Magazine – or worse yet just remember him from some funding-schmooze party? Has the ability to self-promote truly become art?

If Brooklyn Museum is considering showing some respect to Japanese popular arts in the future, here are some free ideas for you. Why not recognize it takes multiple participants to make a genre, and exhibit a number of artists together? Why not juxtapose different genres – say film, anime, manga, and pulp crime fiction? If the classy patrons of Brooklyn Museum are demanding to celebrate a pop artist, how about choosing a real one like Naoki Urasawa or Miyazaki?

I had a lot of artsy friends in college, and it was truly sad to see how the real terms of the world ground them down, ignored and starved them as if determined to make them change their choice of career and deny the world their work. When arbiters of the art world like the exhibition committee of a major museum insist on pandering to hacks like Murakami, they are simultaneously assuring the squeeze-out of many young artists that perhaps really had something to say. It also makes it hard for the people who want to recognize them to persuade those who have been introduced to Japanese media and style through Murakami to give the Japanese art world another chance.

What a pity.