Here's the curator's description of a recent installation at the Armory in NYC:
A crane rising five stories will drop more than 10 tons of used clothes into the cavernous drill hall of the Park Avenue Armory this spring. Rising out of this mass will be piles soaring as high as 40 feet.
Said Tom Eccles, the armory’s consulting curator and executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College. “This is much tougher; it’s a piece with political resonance. The clothing represents humanity, while the crane, man’s capacity for inhumanity.”
Though I placed a question mark after the title, I really have no problem with this exhibit (which I did not personally see) and it's classification as art.
In fact, the wonderful thing about the umbrella under which things are classified as Art is that it is so large as to defy easy description. And, since Day One, artists and creatives of all stripes have sought to push the envelope and make us see things in a whole new way -- alter our perspective if you will, either by provoking a response or evoking an emotion or a feeling.
What I've always found odd, though, is the need by curators or artists to "explain" what a work of art means. Any means of creative expression: painting, poetry, music, is it's own unique and mysterious language and to attempt to translate that dialect into the written or spoke word is, well, silly. Plus, it works against the art by limiting the full impact and meaning of the work.
When you contemplate art, draw your own conclusions.