As if you needed another reason to love the first family, the Wall Street Journal reports:
The Obamas are sending ripples through the art world as they put the call out to museums, galleries and private collectors that they’d like to borrow modern art by African-American, Asian, and Hispanic and female artists for the White House. In a sharp departure from the 19th-century still lifes, pastorals and portraits that dominate the White House’s public rooms, they are choosing bold, abstract art works.
One of the pieces already hanging in the White House, on loan from The National Gallery of Art, is Richard Diebenkorn‘s Berkeley No. 52 (pictured above). Just some of the other artists’ names floated in the WSJ article include Jasper Johns, Edward Ruscha, Josef Albers, Edgar Degas, Franz Kline, Beauford Delaney, and Louise Nevelson. Apparently the couple have been art fans for a long time: one of the first dates the couple went on was to the Art Institute of Chicago and their home in Chicago reportedly contains black and white photographs and modern art. A video accompanies the article.
Essentially unlimited access to the nation’s premier art collections? Perhaps we all should enter politics.
