Ultimately, "Click!" demonstrates that people—whether they're experts or laymen—like pictures that remind them of things they've seen before. For example, this photograph by Claudia Sohrens of a trash-filled lot in Greenpoint got very high ratings from "experts" and people with "some" or "more than a little" knowledge of art. People with less knowledge of art also liked it, but not as much. Why this discrepancy? I think it has to do with the cold, clinical style of the image, with its meticulous detail and zeitgeist-y subject matter—and with the fact that it looks a lot like the work of acclaimed German art photographers like Andreas Gursky and Candida Höfer. (As it happens, Sohrens is a German photographer living in New York.) For people who see a lot of contemporary art—myself included—a picture like this has the familiar look of "quality."

So are crowds the curators of the future? Judging from the results of this experiment, I doubt it. Part of a curator's job is to know what's been done before; to recognize exhausted styles and idioms; and to select art that confounds, surprises, and provokes. Great art glows with a spark of creative innovation. And that, in my expert opinion, is the best-tasting jellybean of all.