A Museum Show Where the Exhibits Are for Sale

In a new installation at New York’s Whitney Museum from the fashion brand Eckhaus Latta, visitors can buy the items on display, raising the question: Is it still an exhibition if you can shop it?

Last Friday morning, the Whitney Museum of Art in New York opened its latest art exhibition. Or maybe it didn’t. “Eckhaus Latta: Possessed”—an installation from Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, the duo behind a seven-year-old, avant-indie fashion label—is, for all intents and purposes, a store. Racks teem with inside-out fuzzy sweatshirts, doodle-print button-up shirts and seam-showing jeans. You can ogle them, fondle them, try them on and, yes, leave with them. You may also leave wondering: Was that art or was that just shopping?

Speaking...