Charlie Rose. (Courtesy CBS)

This morning on CBS's Early Show, Charlie Rose led a spirited interview with Amit Sood, founder of the Google Art Project, which essentially works like Google Books for art, displaying "30,000 works of art from over 150 collections in 40 countries."

Though Mr. Rose's co-host Gayle King offered some fine back-up commentary ("I'm thinking your mom must be very proud"), Mr. Rose took charge in the discussion.

"So if I want to go online and see the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, I can go to Google Art?" Mr. Rose says in the video at the link above, aghast.

"Well you can't," Mr. Sood says, pointing out that that is not a great example, "because we don't have the Louvre."

"You can curate your own exhibition!" Mr. Rose remarks later, having been told that users may start their own digital collections.

"I try not to use the word 'curate,'" Mr. Sood says, "because it gets me into trouble with museums."

Mr. Koons. (Courtesy CBS)

CBS has been kind enough to upload the the segment of 60 Minutes that Morley Safer shot about the contemporary art world back in 1993. Given how infamous the segment is, it's amazing how low-key and almost silly many of his criticisms seem today. He becomes exasperated about a blank canvas by Robert Ryman, a text painting by Christopher Wool (Rat, Rat, Rat) and a bunch of sculptures by Jeff Koons.

As Marion Maneker says over on his Art Market Monitor blog, it's worth a watch if only to see so many of today's art world heavyweights in their youth, particularly Jeff Koons, who was still honing his slick, corporate, deliriously bizarre explanations for his work. Here's what he has to say about his sculptures of basketballs suspended in fish tanks: "I was giving a definition of life and death. This is the eternal. This is what life is like after death."

Here's the video:

Can't wait for the sequel on Sunday evening.