Deborah Trustman

The big museums, squeezed by rising costs, have turned into impresarios and are depending increasingly on spectacular exhibits designed to lure the crowds. The latest is “The Search for Alexander”— fancifully named, extravagantly touted, and enmeshed in corporate and international politics. If you look closely, you will also see some beautiful objects.

Buyers are bullish on art as an investment— but the art world is a wild and woolly place, where practices that would land a stockbroker in jail are just business as usual.