Compared, say, with the Whitney Museum in New York, the Carnegie offers what to a new curator must seem a paradisiacal expanse. On the ground floor, a long, wide entrance corridor leads toward the Hall of Sculpture. Upstairs is a series of enormously high rooms off of which stretches a balcony that looks down on the sculpture hall and across from which is an even longer sequence of front galleries illuminated by natural light.

Unfortunately, this year’s International, curated by Richard Armstrong, too often makes ineffective use of the museum’s space. In the entrance corridor, the Joan Mitchells