Sum of the Arts
Years a message in a bottle was floating in the Baltic Sea until its discovery by a fisherman = 101
Inspired by the Harper’s Index, Sum of the Arts is a periodic tabulation of numbers floating around the art world and beyond.
Paintings in the Louvre that have received their own fan mail and require a personal mailbox = 1 (the “Mona Lisa”)
Cézanne sketches found on the back of his watercolors going on view this Friday at Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation = 2
Pieces of a broken and burned Michelangelo sculpture reassembled in Florence over two decades = 14
Unpublished Frida Kahlo love letters to José Bartoli on display and going to auction next Wednesday at Doyle’s in New York = 25 (some over 100 pages long)
Years a message in a bottle was floating in the Baltic Sea until its discovery by a fisherman = 101
3D scans of animal skulls added to the Google Art Project by the California Academy of Sciences = over 200
Clay figures sculpted by artist Liz Crow from Thames river mud as an endurance performance on British austerity measures = 650
Graffiti inscriptions by WWI soldiers discovered in tunnels 100 feet below the ground north of Paris = 2,000
Estimated living weight of the 80% intact stegosaurus skeleton recently added to the Natural History Museum in London = 3,527 pounds
Plastic translucent balls that will fill the National Building Museum in Washington, DC as part of Snarkitecture’s “The Beach” installation this summer = 1,000,000
