“The clearest way of talking about the difference [Ms. Heiss made] was getting rid of the pedestal and those aspects that made art important by giving it prestige,” said Richard Nonas, an 80-year-old artist included in “Forty.” “Alanna changed the way art is seen and thought about publicly more than almost anybody else of my generation.”
Mr. Nonas’s large steel sculpture “Alligator” lies on the floor of a second-floor gallery, in the same spot it occupied in “Rooms,” though the setting has evolved. In 1976, the walls of the derelict building were raw and falling down. Now, they are museum-grade white and cooled by air conditioning.