MANUEL BORJA-VILLEL AND SERGE GUILBAUT don’t want to set the world on fire, they just want to detonate a thermonuclear device in the heart of art history. Ostensibly trying to blow a hole in the more conservative habits of exhibiting institutions and scholarship on postwar art, the curators’ recent exhibition, “Be-Bomb: The Transatlantic War of Images and All That Jazz, 1946–1956,” at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, gathered a politically charged collection of artworks, documents, and artifacts of popular culture from the decade following the Crossroads nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll

Wilfredo Prieto’s new work, Sin título (alfombra roja) (Untitled [Red Carpet]), 2007, is his second created specifically for the space of the Galería Nogueras Blanchard, following Biblioteca Blanca (White Bookcase), 2004. Like the earlier work by the Cuban artist, this installation is formally severe, apparently consisting only of a long red carpet unfurled across the length of the space. But looking at the edge of the rug, the viewer can easily see that under it there is a great deal of dust, which gathered in the gallery while it was closed for the summer. Though many viewers—myself included—were