Sum of the Arts
Number of Water Lilies paintings destroyed by Monet just before a 1908 exhibition = 15
Inspired by the Harper’s Index, Sum of the Arts is a periodic tabulation of numbers floating around the art world and beyond.
- Number of hours the Alexander Calder-designed BMW car raced before it was permanently retired due to a damaged driveshaft = 7
- Average number of artworks bought by Eli and Edythe Broad a week = 1
- Number of Water Lilies paintings destroyed by Monet just before a 1908 exhibition = 15
- Number of local animal species in Cape Town that are drawn with reflective tape as part of Bryan Little’s The Endemic Project = 16
- Countries the United States has returned looted artifacts to since 2007 = 30
- Number of skull fragments used to reconstruct the forensic remains of a 435,000,000-year-old murder victim = 50
- Number of motorized seesaws installed in a deconsecrated church by Swiss artist Zimoun = 150
- Number of flowers that filled an abandoned house in Detroit this month as part of a temporary art installation = 4,000
- Pounds of debris the new Whitney Museum in New York can sustain with its high-tech flood-mitigation system = 6,750
- Age (in years) of an ancient fossilized fish discovered by a board member of the Creation Museum (where the Earth is declared to be only 6,000 years old) = 60,000,000
