Well Artie, the Institutional Theory worked too well, if everything (Artworld says) is art then, of course, we've opened the door for a definition without substance.  Every good theory has it's downside, disgusting has become an aesthetic form via Hirst  and Ms. Beauty has been turned into a whore for the most common of objects, Mr. Art either got waylaid by size and fame, looking for the sublime, or, became another boring lecture in an art history class. Either way, there is, as Arendt pointed out, a crisis in culture.  

After the influence of Beuys and Warhol, Artworld has been democratized to an unrecognized farce; Museums are amusement parks selling fastfood and designer calendars while showing child friendly pieces done by publicity seeking curators to increase attendance, the galleries have turned into celebrity parties with HipHop bands in runway fashion shows and investment brokers advise their clients to trade art as a commodity, like common stocks... then keep it locked away from public view in bank vaults, to be used as tax brakes –hello J.Koons. Art, our only real culture-creator, has been recycled into a publicity gimmick, the vacuum having been filled with banality.

As you said, “There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and... ...it is the end of the story."