The Art Looters
By 
While this might not be as important as gutting Social Security, it’s still pretty important.
The future of a vast collection of public artwork is in doubt as the Trump administration plans to fire workers who preserve and maintain more than 26,000 pieces owned by the U.S. government, including paintings and sculptures by renowned artists, some dating to the 1850s.
Fine arts and historic preservation workers at the General Services Administration told The Washington Post that at least five regional offices were shuttered last week and that more than half of the division’s approximately three dozen staff members were abruptly put on leave pending their terminations. Workers expressed fear that the cuts will threaten a collection of precious art housed in federal buildings across the country, including Alexander Calder’s 1974 “Flamingo” at the John C. Kluczynski Federal Building in Chicago and Michael Lantz’s 1942 “Man Controlling Trade” outside the Federal Trade Commission building in D.C.
The cuts and restructuring follow President Donald Trump’s executive orders on hiring freezes and reductions across the federal workforce, a GSA spokesperson said Tuesday, adding that the agency is “making decisions to optimize the workforce for our future mission, and remains committed to supporting impacted employees as they transition from federal service.”
“This email serves as notice that your organizational unit is being abolished along with all positions within the unit — including yours,” read the March 3 memo, signed by acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian. Ehikian added that the eliminated units “no longer align” with agency and White House goals, and referenced the efforts by Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service to slash costs across the government.
According to former staffers, the agency is looking to end its lease for a storage facility in Northern Virginia that holds hundreds of paintings and sculptures, including pieces sponsored by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program responsible for some of the nation’s most iconic images. Federal government watchdogs over the years have sought to reclaim WPA artworks, some of which were sold on eBay. When the works were commissioned, artists were paid as much as $42 a week in 1934, or roughly $1,000 a week in today’s dollars, for finished pieces.
The federal government’s art collection works like a distributed museum, with paintings and sculptures spread across courthouses and office buildings around the country. The government continues to add to its collection through the Art in Architecture Program, which devotes 0.5 percent of estimated construction costs for a federal building toward commissioning new artworks. Since 1974, the GSA has commissioned more than 500 works by artists for public plazas and federal offices, among them Sam Gilliam, Ellsworth Kelly and Maya Lin.
Now, see, Big Balls is too young to care about art. But if there’s one thing right wingers love as they age, it’s pricey art collection, the larger and more monumental the better. So expect the sell off to happen soon. I am sure Peter Thiel has a hell of an art collection and now he can have more.