Artist Andrea Fraser Will Map Trump Inauguration Donors & Art World Ties

Artist Andrea Fraser Will Map Trump Inauguration Donors & Art World Ties

Andrea Fraser is a performance artist, known primarily for her focus on institutional critiques. Based in New York and Los Angeles, Fraser is currently a new genres professor in the Art Department faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles.  A native of Billings, Montana, Fraser grew up in Berkeley, Calif. She is a graduate of New York University, the Whitney Museum of American Art's Independent Study Program and the School of Visual Arts. Initially, Fraser wrote art criticism before incorporating it as analysis and commentary in her artistic practice. 

We all know that Donald Trump has little interest in any art not inspired by his own image. His donors, however, are major players in the art world. In her new project, Fraser is mapping the connections between major US museums and the political elite, and their institutional ties to the White House. The Art Newspaper writes that Fraser is documenting all political donations made in 2016 by museum patrons and trustees, many of whom contributed to the Trump campaign and inauguration. 

Donald Trump's inauguration was a small and comparatively understated affair, but one that rose a staggering amount of money -- $106.7 million, twice the amount raised by Obama for his historic, much larger affair, writes Hyperallergic. According to a 510-page report of donations to Trump’s inaugural committee released in April by the Federal Elections Committee, billionaire art collector and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) board member Steven A. Cohen as well as Henry Kravis — whose wife, Marie-Josée Kravis, is the president of MoMA — both gave $1 million. Unlike campaign contributions, which are capped, there is no limit to how much can be given to a candidate’s inaugural committee.