It is possible to say, if one has a slight taste for paradox, that from the very beginning there has only ever been contemporary art, and so the history of art in its entirety could be described as an interminable succession of contemporary moments. There is something of this Zeno-esque perspective in the subtitle of “Voici: 100 Years of Contemporary Art,” a show that presented such unusual pairings as Jeff Koons and Rodin, Sue Williams and Manet. The inclusion of Manet alone suffices to demonstrate that the strict limits of the century were blithely transgressed; in fact, the oldest work on

In Japan there are several agencies that design cartoon characters for use by publishing houses specializing in manga. The most complex of these characters are best able to become protagonists and therefore survive, but they can be prohibitively expensive for the publishers. Other characters are sold at more moderate prices because they’re unlikely to survive, to keep their place in the narrative, for more than a few pages. French artists Philippe Parreno and Pierre Huyghe bought the rights to one of these characters destined to disappear in an instant. She became the basis for their project,