How A Work Of Art Makes It Onto The Wall Of The White House

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On his first day on the job, President Trump made some changes to the Oval Office; he installed gold drapes and moved some statues. First Families have some leeway to make changes to the White House, and that includes changes to its art collection.

It can take many hands — or eyes — for one work of art to make it into the White House. Take, for example, the large painting the Obamas hung in what's called the Treaty Room.

"It's an unbelievably energetic, beautiful sort of thing, in which a black horse whose body is only somewhat defined is seen running across a kind of crimson field," says curator Mark Rosenthal.

Titled Butterfly, the painting is one of a series of horse paintings by American painter Susan Rothenberg. Rosenthal had admired it since the mid-1970s, and when he became a curator at the National Gallery of Art 20 years later, he remembered the painting and set out to acquire it. But for that, he needed money. So he convinced Texas donors Nancy and Perry Bass to purchase it for the museum.

"I had met them once or twice — barely knew them," Rosenthal says. But what he did know was that they were "revered conservationists."

Rosenthal thought the picture of the horse might speak to them. It did, and the painting entered the National Gallery's collection.

So how did the painting end up in the private quarters of the White House nearly 15 years later? The National Gallery's current staff preferred not to be interviewed. But Rosenthal says, typically, the new first family sends someone there, and to other museums, to pick out art for their private living quarters.

"It might be a friend, it might be a decorator ... but it was someone designated by the president and first lady to come to the National Gallery of Art and choose work ... " Rosenthal explains. "It's very much [like] a kid in a candy store."

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