Abstract Art: Making way in the White House

President Obama has made some good progress for the arts in the first 9 months of his presidency: see stimulus package. He can do more, and I am sure he will- once this Health care reform business is on its way into being, the economy is fixed and you know he has resolved two horrific wars. Or shall I say WE- cause after all it takes two to tango- and 51% of the voting public to elect a president.

This could very well be a post about volunteerism- which is more valuable now when more people need- access, educational opportunities, and hope... but it isn't.

This is just a fun blurb about how President Obama is making some changes to the permanent collection of the White House- which has been lacking in modern art- not to mention art made by people other than affluent, old, dead, white men- not that they are bad artists, just not representative of the arts, by any means. OFF THE SOAPBOX. I am excited to share with you this blog post, about what is a big step forward in arts in the white house:

By bringing works by the likes of Diebenkorn, Thomas, and Albers, as well as Jasper
Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Louise Nevelson, into the White House, Obama is
symbolically ridding the executive mansion—and, by extension, the U.S.
Presidency—of the xenophobia that has informed the American rejection of
abstraction. Our national fear of abstract art— “I don’t get it”—and the anger
that it can provoke—“You call that art?”—are, at least in large part, vestiges
of the anti-foreigner attitudes of the forties and fifties, which informed those
fundamentalist congressional objections to abstractionism, and gave rise to such
blots on our history as the House Un-American Activities Committee, McCarthyism,
and the electrocution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

Obama’s selections also demonstrate that we are smart enough to “get” abstractionism.
He’s smarter than we are, and more eloquent—and, as a graduate of Columbia and
Harvard Law, as much a member of the Ivy League elite as is President Bush. But
President Obama has repeatedly endeavored to make himself, and even his
heterogeneity, relatable. A person from a blended family, a background colored
by loss, with the problems, struggles, internal conflicts, and flaws familiar to
so many other Americans. Perhaps if one ordinary American is willing to take the
time to appreciate and understand abstraction, the rest of us may find ourselves
inspired to do the same.

Now, doesn't this give you hope that we have a president that will support the arts?