Art Market Monitor

Not everyone appreciates the art that’s donated for their benefit. At least, so it would seem with students in Indianapolis’s public schools, according to the Chicago Tribune, many of them have stabbed the $4 million worth of art with pencils:

The Indianapolis Star reports that donated paintings by T.C. Steele, William Forsyth and other members of the Hoosier Group of impressionist painters hang with little fanfare at public schools in the city. Indianapolis Public Schools house paintings and artwork from many Indiana artists, and the district’s collection has been estimated to be worth $4 million. The report did not say who evaluated the works of art.

Schools might not be the safest place for such valuable paintings and at least a few have needed to be repaired due to pencil stabbings, the report said.

[...] Under the terms of the donations, most of the paintings must remain at the schools to which they were originally given, IPS officials say. The board is not considering selling any of the artwork, the newspaper reported. Security devices are attached to all the paintings, and the school buildings have alarms. Some paintings are on permanent loan to the Indiana State Museum, and others have been displayed in the Statehouse.

The school collection ranks among the world’s best collections of work by the Hoosier Group and Brown County Art Colony, said Harriet Warkel, curator of pre-1945 American art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Indianapolis Schools House Art Worth $4 Million (Chicago Tribune)

Also of Interest:

• US News Ranks Top Fine Arts Programs
  Below is US News and World Report‘s ranking of American Fine Arts programs. Rank College name 1 Rhode Island School...
  
• Embezzlers and the Arts
  The LA Times’s Culture Monster blog directed us to this small but telling story in Indianapolis about the local Penrod...
  
• 50/50
  Maybe you’ve heard of the Vogels and their exceptionally large collection of minimalist and conceptual art amassed on their civil...
  
• Fisk Loses; Can Nashville Win?
  The Associated Press reports on the judge’s decision in the Fisk-Georgia O’Keeffe-Crystal Bridges case where the $74 million collection of...
  
• Not So Well Endowed
  The Wall Street Journal runs a story on Trinity College’s headaches with donor intent. But the story also illustrates that...