​I’ve talked before about how helpful it is for galleries to offer food and refreshments at openings, that a lot of art seems more beautiful, profound, socially conscious, and politically relevant to the well-fed and slightly tipsy. I lamented the shocking lack of cheese cubes as well as the austere Kruschev-era-style Perrier-rationing at 49 Geary, an unfortunate state of things on its own, but especially piteous in light of something I heard at the most recent first Thursday. A couple of stalwart art lovers who’d attended the monthly art walk since 2001 said that in former days of plenty, not only did the galleries there serve more generous amounts of water, champagne, and wine — and in glasses made of glass rather than plastic – but in what now seems like an ecstasy of largesse, offered entire wheels of cheese. I was ready to despair that America’s best days really were behind it, and that that behind, happily fattened on bries as fragrant as the feet of French angels, had waddled away forever. (continue reading)