Playing the visitor is a necessary, somewhat inescapable way to negotiate the world outside of your own mundane life. She's built a career on understanding how people perceive the stuff before their eyes, and here uses fairly standard deconstructivist tools to unpack the sensationalistic voyeurism on which tourism is built. Rinse, repeat as necessary. But venture out we must. Despite the many havocs wreaked by the modern tourist adventure, it's as central to our culture as the creative process.
Tourists make ordinary places extraordinary by their presences.
This connection to art is the meat of the book, and when Lippard applies her tenure in the art world to this new forum, she shines. Danya Ruttenberg is a Bay Area writer.