Posting this to the dunk tank because everyone involved sucks.

tl;dr Writer writes something nice about Jeff Koons (lol why?), Koons doesn't understand its a positive review (because of course he doesn't), Brooklyn Rail pulls the article because Koons is unhappy (because art criticism is solely about masturbation now), writer cries about "free speech" because they couldn't publish their masturbatory "review" of Koons.

Here is a sample of the people and writing involved:

Of the Koons sculpture, Golan wrote: “There is a certain tension that reads as the aftereffect of the violence that prompted the memorial, latent in the way Koons’ arm juts out diagonally from its base.” Golan added: “It is this remarkable mix of benevolence and tension in Koon’s gesture that marks his ‘Bouquet’ as an important artwork.”

That tension was at the heart of Koons’s objections. In an email message, the artist’s representative, Lauran Rothstein, wrote to Golan: “You refer to Jeff’s passive gesture of offering as one of violence.” She added that Golan’s essay had aligned Koons “with extremely negative connotations.”

Also after pasting this in, I just realized that the NYT must have fired any editors because we have "Koons'" "Koon's" and "Koons's" within two paragraphs lol.