[TheOtherHobbes]

Curators and gallery owners absolutely demand this.

"Everything you need to know is already hanging on the wall" is not considered an acceptable response.

The work needs to question, challenge, interrogate, and subvert, and artists definitely need to Be Interested in specific culturally niche things.

Lit crit, curation, the gallery scene, and visual and musical criticism are alternative industries - somewhere between symbiotic and parasitic on the creators who make the art.

You can make a very fine career for yourself by developing a reputation for making outrageous statements about other people's work. Popular music journalism isn't too bad at this, but by the time you get to academia it all gets very rarefied, meta, bullshitty, and (in reality) aggressively careerist.