To investigate what something is, we tend to examine its properties. Presumably, if something is considered 'art,' then it should have different properties than its indiscernible counterpart, the material substrate (i.e. the stuff it is made out of). The differences between the properties of a piece of artwork as art and the properties of its material base are ontological, not institutional. One would have an 'institutional' change of perception about a brick, for instance, when discovering that it used to be part of the Berlin Wall. But, the discovery of a story behind an artifact is not what elevates that artifact to the status of art. Art somehow involves transcendence, or a 'pointing to,' concepts beyond the material base. The qualities of the aesthetic object (i.e. the transcendent concepts) are a completely different kind of thing, metaphysically speaking, than the qualities inherent in the base. "Substance and subject are not one."
