The New York Times ran a fascinating item selecting from readers’ responses to the news of the Giacometti sale:

• The economy is still tanking, banking reforms still haven’t been passed, and we’re still celebrating the garish excesses of cache consumerism. We can’t expect to have a healthy attitude about material wealth until we stop envying and ogling those who prefer to have a statue in their seventh home than to inoculate dying people against malaria, or any number of other truly worthy causes. Let’s learn from our mistakes. This is an embarrassing display–not something to be celebrated.–Center Field, Los Angeles

• It’s another manifestation of the fundamental disorder of our world and of the irresponsibility of people with obviously too much money in their pockets. The sheer madness of the price and the crude blatancy of the buyer and the whole art market should never be confused with the real significance of art and culture for the real life of real people.–Sohst, Berlin

• It makes me kind of ill realizing that there are people on this earth that are so wealthy they can afford to spend this kind of money for a personal art collection.– JJ, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Readers Respond to Giacometti Sale (New York Times)