Sum of the Arts
Number of Monets purchased by Paul Durand-Ruel over the four decades the art dealer promoted Impressionism = 1,000
![Pierre Huyghe, "Untilled (Liegender Frauenakt) [Reclining female nude]" (2012), concrete with beehive structure, wax, and live bee colony (courtesy the Museum of Modern Art, © 2015 Pierre Huyghe, photo by Jonathan Muzikar)](https://hyperallergic.com/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/07/momabees.jpg)
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 times a week the bees swarming Pierre Huyghe’s “Untilled” in the Museum of Modern Art sculpture garden are inspected by professional beekeepers = 14
- Weight in tons of a life-size elephant statue made of ivory tusks, installed as an anti-poaching message at the Botswana airport = 2.5
- Number of months the 555-foot Washington Monument was the tallest structure in the world when it was first built, before being surpassed by the Eiffel Tower = 6
- Number of medieval shoes excavated in Oxford = 50
- Recommended sandcastle height in centimeters according to architect Renzo Piano = 60 (~23″)
- Minutes the 355-foot-long oculus in the Santiago Calatrava-designed World Trade Center Transportation Hub will open each September 11 = 102
- Number of 19th-century cast bones in the skeleton of Dippy the diplodocus, which for the first time in 35 years will be removed from public display at London’s Natural History Museum = 292
- Number of Monets purchased by Paul Durand-Ruel over the four decades the art dealer promoted Impressionism = 1,000
- Year in which carbon dating of artifacts may not be reliable due to too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere = 2030
- Number of visitors who attended the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s China: Through the Looking Glass from its opening on May 7 to July 21 = 500,000 (catching up with the 661,509 visitors to 2011’s Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty)
