The director of the Brooklyn Museum, Arnold Lehman, must be doing something right. Mr. Lehman has streamlined the entire institution. He has changed the museum’s entrance and façade to resemble that of a mall or airport, so that visitors do not have to climb steps or be intimidated by lofty Greek columns. He has done away with specialization, reorganizing his curatorial staff and dividing it into two teams, one to maintain the permanent collection and one to mount exhibitions. He has also reorganized and repackaged the museum’s collections, displaying the artworks in colorful, thematic installations that recall booths at school carnivals and science fairs. And he has introduced Target First Saturdays, which allows for free admission to the museum on the first Saturday of every month between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m. To top it all off, beginning with the infamous “Sensation” exhibit in 1999, Mr. Lehman has brought in shows — “Hip-Hop Nation,” “Star Wars,” “Marilyn Monroe,” “Graffiti”— that have broad public appeal.

On a recent, bitterly cold Saturday, just before the Annie Leibovitz retrospective closed, the Brooklyn Museum was as crowded as I have ever seen it. There were lines to get in, lines to pay, and lines for the elevators, exhibitions, restrooms, and cafés. People were elbow-to-elbow amid the slick, celebrity photos of Ms. Leibovitz, the gargantuan yet inert, hyperrealist figurative sculptures of Ron Mueck, and the life-size animal illustrations of Walton Ford — surreal watercolors that, flat and formless, cannot compete with the charming scenes found in many children’s books, let alone the mysterious flora and fauna that inhabit the masterpieces of Henri Rousseau.

Now the museum has mounted what is sure to be another crowdpleaser, “Landscapes From the Age of Impressionism,” a gathering of some 40 French and American paintings from the Brooklyn Museum’s permanent collection.

“Landscapes From the Age of Impressionism,” which includes beautiful paintings by Monet, Courbet, Daubigny, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro, is a perfectly likable show. Monet’s “The Doge’s Palace in Venice” (1908), painted from a boat on the canal, conveys the city’s rhapsodic naturalism. Hot and astringent, Monet’s flickering color sets Venice’s water and architecture on fire. Likewise, Renoir’s “Les Vignes à Cagnes (The Vineyards at Cagnes)” (1906) is erotically charged and writhing. The vineyard’s alizarin trees cut through the landscape as if they were open wounds. Courbet’s “The Wave” (1869), of a single stormy surge, communicates the power and effusiveness of the sea. And Daubigny’s “The River Seine at Mantes” (c. 1856) is understated yet sweeping — its cool light palpable; as is his “A Bend in the River Oise” (1872), whose mellow pink, amber, and violet clouds and river glow with the subdued light of dusk.

But the show also offers humdrum works, most of which are by American Impressionists. Many of these landscapes are overtly sentimental or melodramatic, and they merely telegraph rather than emit light. The instructive exhibition, installed so that French and American works are interspersed, reaffirms the old maxim that the best painting by an American Impressionist is worse than the worst painting by a French Impressionist. Compare, for instance, Monet’s “Vernon, Soleil (Vernon in the Sun) Church at Vernon” (1894) with Theodore Robinson’s “The Watering Pots” (1890), which are exhibited side-by-side. Both artists use white liberally, but Monet’s opacity conveys the powdery, scintillating haze of moisture and filtered light, whereas Robinson’s white — a stand-in for light — is leaden and impenetrable.

In most museum exhibits, the gap between glorious and tepid artworks, though conspicuous, would not be as magnified. But “Landscapes” is yet another window into the current climate of the Brooklyn Museum. The show betrays a lack of curatorial vision — one that is also increasingly absent at an institutional level.

Navigating my way through the Leibovitz and Mueck shows, I was aware of an excitement one experiences at sporting events or car shows. People were looking, but absent was the kind of one-to-one engagement usually present in a crowded museum show, where the art is so powerful that it commands the space and, humbling viewers, demands their concentration. No matter how many great Monets the Brooklyn Museum puts on exhibit, they will be offset by the utter lack of taste evident in the mounting of shows such as “Leibovitz,” “Mueck,” and “Ford” — three exhibits that suggest the museum has traded art for Hollywood stars, cheap thrills, and overgrown children’s book illustration.

What is present at the Brooklyn Museum is a belief in the power of art as entertainment and attraction. Mr. Lehman obviously knows what the public wants, and he is giving it to them. What is missing at the Brooklyn Museum is a faith in the public and in the power of art.

Certainly museum directors have to pay the bills. But the Brooklyn Museum is behaving less like a cultural institution that is funded by tax dollars — and which has a moral responsibility to the public to maintain the highest cultural standards — and more like an amusement park. Popular opinion is elevated above the needs of culture. But the public does not always know what is best for them — or for art. (As a case in point, in its day, French Impressionism was the most hated art movement in the history of art.) That is why museums hire professionals — instead of fire them. The Brooklyn Museum’s audience-friendly approach denies the fact that art — a force of its own, independent of pubic taste — takes its own course.

Mr. Lehman has suggested that his museum is the inevitable museum of the future. Sadly, he may be right, but the Brooklyn Museum, despite its increasingly crowded halls, is becoming increasingly empty. If cultural institutions are to serve the public, they must dig deeper than the bottom line, and they must look further than their ticket lines.

Until May 13 (200 Eastern Parkway, 718-638-5000).