''I'm not sitting here lamenting what there was,'' Cortada said Monday as he prepared to take down the exhibit. ``It would be arrogant to think that a building of my childhood is any more important than a building of someone else's childhood. ... I look at this wall as naturally as I see death.''
In the era of blockbuster exhibits that draw huge corporate sponsorship -- The Herald's support of the King Tut exhibit a case in point -- it is worth seeking out that art that transcends the practical. To remember that the best art -- whether a painting or a historic building -- is unconcerned with questions of profit or ``usefulness.''
In rejecting an easy point of view, ''Absence of Place'' makes a larger one about the value of process over destination and dialogue over certainty.
`JUST THINK'
Art Basel brought a lot of frivolity and commercialism to Miami, but it also opened a space for the imagination. And cities no less than people cannot survive without an ability to re-imagine themselves.
Listen to a few readers' memories read aloud.