Anna Altman
Lucy Ives was supposed to be writing her dissertation when Stella Krakus, the main character in Ives’s debut novel, Impossible Views of the World, came into her mind. It would take six years for Stella to fully emerge, but when she did, she brought an unlikely triumvirate of irrepressible qualities: a nerd’s expertise in maps and early Americana, a kooky and misanthropic sense of self, and a gimlet eye for the art world in which she seems surprised to have found herself. Stella is a curator at the fictional Central Museum of Art in Manhattan, and when one of 
Elmgreen & Dragset are a Scandinavian artist duo known for making realistic environments in unlikely contexts. These projects—among their most famous is a fully realized Prada store in the desert outside Marfa, Texas—poke fun at the moneyed art world. In 33 Artists in 3 Acts, Sarah Thornton first encounters the pair at the opening of the Venice Biennale in 2009. They are presenting “The Collectors,” an exhibition for which they transformed two of the Biennale’s national pavilions into homes for a wealthy family and a gay bachelor, respectively. An actor playing a real-estate agent lets slip details of the personal