Sum of the Arts
Display cases for the 300 artifacts in Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti at the Field Museum in Chicago = 0 (to respect the belief that Vodou objects should not be encased)
Inspired by the Harper’s Index, Sum of the Arts is a periodic tabulation of numbers floating around the art world and beyond.
- Display cases for the 300 artifacts in Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti at the Field Museum in Chicago = 0 (to respect the belief that Vodou objects should not be encased)
- Acres at the Brooklyn Museum and Brooklyn Botanic Garden given over to growing vegetables in the World War II Victory Gardens effort = 3
- Frames kept empty as a reminder of the art stolen and never recovered from the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist = 4
- Masks a powerful Tlingit shaman possessed on average, like the one in the Rubin Museum of Art’s new Becoming Another: The Power of Masks = 8
- Researchers involved in finding the lost tomb of Don Quixote author Miguel de Cervantes in a forgotten crypt in a Madrid convent = 30
- Years artist Michael Heizer has worked on “City,” a massive earth art piece in the Basin and Range of Nevada that’s threatened by development = 43
- Age of James McNeill Whistler’s mother in his famed 1871 portrait of her, which will tour from the Musée d’Orsay to the Clark Art Institute = 67
- Ultrasound speakers in Flying Object’s upcoming exhibition at Tate Britain, where visitors can “touch” the art through localized sound waves = 256
- Crime artifacts from the London Metropolitan Police’s secret “Black Museum” that will go on view to the public for the first time this October = 500
- People who signed an online petition against using the UNESCO-listed 8 BCE Roman amphitheater in Mérida, Spain, for a padel tennis competition = 100,000
