Doug Aitken's oversize video installations of Donald Sutherland, Tilda Swinton, and Brazilian samba rocker Seu Jorge playing ordinary city folk prompted a veritable overflow of superlatives at the opening of his Sleepwalkers show at the Museum of Modern Art on Tuesday. "This is the best public art display since Christo's Gates," trumpeted Lisa Anastos of the work, which will be projected on MoMA's external walls nightly for those willing to brave the cold streets of midtown. "I love art that everyone can enjoy for free." The museum's neighbors, some of whom staged a guerrilla protest with PowerPoint projectors last week, might disagree, but not Thelma Golden. "Doug traffics in the monumental and the significant," pronounced the Studio Museum of Harlem's director. "This work captures the city's epic quality, but it's also an intimate portrait of New Yorkers."

Robert Wilson's VOOM Portraits at Phillips de Pury & Co. elicited similar praise. "It's exciting to be a part of all this," said Steve Buscemi, whose photograph as a gum-chewing butcher on a game show is one among 36 high-definition video shots. On the other plasma screens were images of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Johnny Depp, and HRH Princess Caroline of Monaco and Hanover. Oh, and Brad Pitt, dripping wet in his boxer shorts. "Where is he?" Fabiola Beracasa wondered aloud while touring the darkly lit galleries.

Pitt, who threatened to sue Vanity Fair for running the photo on the cover of a recent issue, was nowhere to be found, and Wilson himself went missing for a portion of the evening. Standing outside smoking a cigarette and indulging fans' snapshot requests, he said, "We've got half a dozen more already done. Sharon Stone, Catherine Deneuve, Sean Penn. Actually we haven't finished that one, so we'll show it to him next time we're in L.A." Smart thinking.