Back to December 2008 ARTnews Retrospective  

100 Years Ago

Visitors to the Louvre are often puzzled at the number of artists who are allowed to work in the various rooms and who, sometimes, gather so closely and in such a number around the picture they endeavor to match that it disappears altogether behind a screen of easels. Many of these artists, it seems, are either most unassuming or exceedingly liberal people, for they often forget their pictures, when completed, in the galleries and never call again for them.
—“Paris Letter,” December 5, 1908

75 Years Ago

The announcement of a Public Works Art Project, under which it is estimated that some twenty-five hundred painters, sculptors and craftsmen will be employed in decorating public buildings, marks the entrance of the Federal Government into the administration of this country’s cultural and artistic life. The project is under the jurisdiction of Civil Works Administration officials who have appointed regional committees to direct the activities. The committees will have the power to authorize commissions for easel paintings, sculpture, designs for mural painting and other art work, which when executed will be the property of the government.
—“Federal Art Plan to Provide Funds for Needy Artists,” December 16, 1933

50 Years Ago

The chilling phrase, “They may only paint in their studios,” might refer to a damper on studio-parties, but it probably means that the Soviet Artist is not trusted to work freely in the privacy of his house. Yet, there is another side to the coin: Russians care about art, even if only to be indignant and brutal about it.
—“The Artist as Worker for the State,” by Rockwell Kent, December 1958

25 Years Ago

The United States Department of Labor now counts more than 200,000 Americans as artists. Hypothesize that each might annually create 50 works of art. A century of such activity will produce a billion paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photographs. If art museums are to take a responsible sampling of what seems best from this outpouring, they must inevitably multiply and grow. As artists find new mediums with which to work—performance, holography or computers—so much the greater will this burgeoning be. . . . Is not this, though, just as it should be? If not change, after all, what truly justifies every museum enterprise? In a timeless and static world, where everything was and would be the way it had always been, museums would be superfluous.
—“Enough Museums?” by Stephen E. Weil, December 1983