Sum of the Arts

Sum of the Arts is a periodic tabulation of numbers floating around the art world and beyond.

• Number of surviving copies of the misprinted 1631 “Sinners’ Bible” that demanded “Thou shalt commit adultery” = 10
• Number of sections of the giant sequoia Mark Twain Tree felled in 1891 given to museums = 2 (one to the American Museum of Natural History, one to the Natural History Museum in London, which is going off view until March of 2016 for renovations)
• Percentage of museum attendees who reported spending less than an hour in the Louvre during their visit = 6.5
• Weight in tons of a red granite sphinx at Penn Museum, the largest ancient sphinx on view in the Western Hemisphere = 15
• Years after his death that Hieronymus Bosch was called “the devil’s painter” = 30
• Number of glazed ceramic sections on a Renaissance relief sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum, which was acquired in 1899 and is now being restored for an August exhibition in Boston = 40
• Square footage of the “mastodon paper” published in 1859 by The Constellation newspaper in New York, which claimed at the time it was the biggest piece of paper ever made = 49
• Percentage of excavated ancient cuneiform writing that communicates administrative information = 75
• Percentage of 100 surveyed prodigy violinists who started their music studies before the age of seven = 79
• Number of angles each of Berlin’s Museum of Natural History 15 million insect specimens are being photographed from for an online 3D imaging project = 100

• Art
• Sum of the Arts