“I don’t get art,” My Darling B confessed, as we wandered from room to room at the former Madison Public Library on Saturday night.

All the books and most of the shelves had been removed to a temporary location while they build the new library, and to collect a little extra dough they opened up the empty library building to any and all comers for a party they were calling “Bookless.”

To make it a little more interesting, whoever was in charge of the party invited someone, maybe artists, maybe not, to come in advance of the party, showed them the piles of microfilm, book ends, paper, shelves, ceiling tiles and whatever else was left over, and invited them to get as creative as they knew how. The result could have been art, but wasn’t. Hence My Darling B’s confusion.

Someone tore all the ceiling tiles down and stacked them in a straight column.

Someone taped boxes of microfilm together into cubes.

Someone knocked a hole in the wall, cut out a picture of a building they found in a magazine, and stood the picture up in the hole.

Someone painted a room and the desk in it pink.

Someone piled plush toys in a room.

Someone collected hundreds of metal bookends and stacked them in waves on a window sill. I have to admit I liked that one.

But most of it was not art. “You get art just fine,” I answered B. “This is junk.”