"There is nothing so stable as change," Bob Dylan once quipped. And in this current climate, there’s nothing so comforting and hopeful as that proverb. When reminded that change is the norm, we can look at our history of ups and downs, prosperity and hardship and detect our ultimate advance. We can see that in the past, discontent stripped the scales from our eyes, enabling us to draw new conclusions and grow. And in this issue of Modern Painters, we’ve looked at how different people in the artworld are seeing its history anew.

Erica Orden, one of our new contributors, writes about the exhibition "Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History" that opens later this month at the Brooklyn Museum. Finally, the artworld is validating a genre of photography that helped define a cultural revolution and deeply influenced countless music fans. The show’s curator, Gail Buckland, calls its iconic images "brilliant photography whose subject happens to be some of the most exciting people who walked the planet." The show is the latest example of how major art institutions are beginning to acknowledge once marginalized areas of visual art. More examples to come? In 2010 the Museum of Modern Art is planning retrospectives on the filmmaker-animator Tim Burton and the pioneering performance artist Marina Abramovic.

Conversely, many of the artists who were artworld darlings in the go-go days of the financial bubble are now being more carefully scrutinized. In her article on the upcoming exhibition "Pop Life: Art in a Material World" at London’s Tate Modern, another new Modern Painters contributor, the veteran Seattle art critic Regina Hackett, wonders if, in the current economic climate, Warhol’s much bandied about observation that "good business is the best art" is still acceptable. If it’s not, one can’t help but wonder: How will artists who use consumerism as a component of their work react to a new economic situation and different expectations in artmaking? Will they adapt to this new context, one that perhaps calls for a more vigilant consumer as opposed to a frivolous spender? The next few years will no doubt be an interesting transition period.

That said, this is not only a time for looking at the past; at Modern Painters we are also actively anticipating and creating the future. Which is why I’m thrilled to announce the launch of our Re:VISION design competition. Design students and young professionals in practice 10 years or less are invited to reimagine how we live in our homes and to conceive an object or environment that offers a new, more enlightened way of living in this era of economic upheaval and daunting environmental prospects. I encourage our design-savvy readers to take part. After all, engaging discourse is what we are all about.

To learn more about the Re:VISION design competition, visit promotions.artinfo.com/mp-re-visions.