I think the challenge of a lot of non-aesthetic art is that the context disappears, but the piece remains, yet without the context the piece is a bit of a certa

I think the challenge of a lot of non-aesthetic art is that the context disappears, but the piece remains, yet without the context the piece is a bit of a certain emperor without his clothing. A seminal piece of modern art is Duchamps urinal. Apparently, there was a big exhibition in Paris in the early 20th century, and the organizers were a bit snooty, but tried to be progressive, so there were no rules for this exhibition, anything can be art (context: art was at the time narrowly defined as paintings of identifiable subjects in gilded frame, or something like that). Duchamp supposed they weren't totally earnest about that, so he bought a urinal, signed it and submitted it, and sure enough, the organizers rejected it as "not art". He trolled them. Cool, exposing the hipocrites, big deal at the time. But time has more than caught up with this gag. Exposing hipocrisy today is totally run of the mill, literally daily fare in news, comedy, whatever. This leaves us with people paying $20 to visit a the MOMA and look solemnly at a 100 year old urinal that has literally zero inherent artistic qualities. That belong in a history museum, not an art museum. Perhaps modern art museums should be understood more as an art history museum, we're there because it feels significant to be physically near a historically significant object, not to enjoy any inherent qualities of the object.