The internet found out anyone can vote in this New York “I Voted” sticker competition
Plus: The White House said goodbye to these Norman Rockwell sketches
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
The White House said goodbye to these Norman Rockwell sketches
Museum attendance still hasn’t recovered since the pandemic started
The internet found out anyone can vote in this New York “I Voted” sticker competition
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The White House said goodbye to these Norman Rockwell sketches
Four watercolor and black-and-white sketches by Norman Rockwell that have been on loan at the White House since 1978 have been taken down and returned to their owner.
So You Want to See the President shows images of journalists, military leaders, lawmakers and others waiting outside the Oval Office for a meeting with the POTUS. All four sketches — “Gentleman of the Press,” “Beauty and Publicity Man,” “The Press Get a News Flash” and “A Hero is Interviewed” — were published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943.
The work was lent by the descendants of Steve Early, a press secretary under FDR, and the owners requested the art back and received it last year, according to Politico’s West Wing Playbook, which first reported the news and obtained photos of the art. In their place now hang photos of President Joe Biden.
There’s still one Rockwell painting in the Biden White House — his “Working on the Statue of Liberty” (1946) is currently upstairs in the residence, a White House official told Politico — and if the White House ever wants another, they could always try asking.
For the 50th anniversary of Ruby Bridges being the first Black student to integrate her Louisiana elementary school, then-President Barack Obama requested “The Problem We All Live With” (1963) showing Bridges being escorted to school by U.S. Marshalls, which the Norman Rockwell Museum temporarily lent for the occasion.
Museum attendance still hasn’t recovered since the pandemic started
As museums have reopened post-vaccine, they’ve had trouble wooing visitors back, a new survey from Artnet found.
Responses from more than a dozen museums found many museums have reached around two-thirds of their attendance. Interestingly, some regional museums have outperformed big, nationally recognized museums thanks to their reliance on local visitors and school tours rather than international visitors.
Here’s how much attendance recovered since pre-pandemic levels at museums in May:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York): 79%
The Philadelphia Museum of Art: 61%
The Rubin Museum of Art (New York): 63%
The National Portrait Gallery (Washington): 61%
The Seattle Art Museum: 88%
Recovery rates in the low 60s confirm a report released in February from the American Alliance of Museums showing an average recovery of 62%.
“Depending on how the pandemic continues to evolve and the financial support museums are able to secure, we’re hoping to see our field bounce back financially in three to five years,” American Alliance of Museums president Laura Lott told Artnet.
“We expect 2022 to continue to be a challenging year with attendance down nearly 40% at the start of the year,” she said. “Our nation’s museums will continue to need the support of their communities and government at all levels.”
The American Alliance of Museums report also found museums are facing staffing challenges, and museum directors said their top concerns are the continued pandemic and future variants and slow recovery for travel and tourism.
The internet found out anyone can vote in this New York “I Voted” sticker competition
New York State requires voters to live at their present address at least 30 days before an election to vote, but if you want to vote in Ulster County, N.Y.’s 2022 “I Voted” sticker contest, all you need is an internet connection.
There are no residency requirements for the county’s second annual sticker contest, and so far, more than 137,000 people have voted after the contest went viral on TikTok and Twitter. The clear favorite with 92% of the vote is a drawing of a multi-colored monster with the head of a man and the legs of a spider by 14-year-old Hudson Rowan from Marbletown, N.Y. lol.
Rowan is “very excited that his art is being so well received,” Ulster County Board of Elections Commissioner Ashley Dittus told me in an email.
“It’s usually so hard to get young people interested in voting so to find something that brings attention to voting that gets kids excited is awesome! “ she said.
Artwork was submitted by local students ages 13-18 and their parents and teachers. About 14 submissions were turned in, and the county board of elections picked six finalists internally, Dittus said.
All the other designs stick to more traditional “I Voted” sticker themes, like American flags and bald eagles. Just one design — a red, white, and blue depiction of the U.S. Capitol by 14-year-old Wendy Stewart — has managed to receive more than 1% of the vote. Last year’s winning design, by Giuliana DiBenedetto, was also more traditional, with red, whit, and blue stars.
The contest is open until the end of July and you can vote here.
Fun fact: Did you know the U.S. Election Assistance Commission awards the most creative and original “I Voted” stickers annually? In 2020, they awarded stickers from the city of Ann Arbor, Mich.; Escambia County, Fla.; San Mateo County, Calif.; and Connecticut, which celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment expanding the right to vote to women with stickers of Connecticut suffragists and women’s rights activists.
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That sticker is SENDING me, and it will be the ultimate testament to democracy if it wins.