Apparently there are some 90 million potential voters here in the U.S. who will not be exercising their right to vote today — perhaps too busy, too lazy, too put off by the relentless negativity of the campaigns, or just too unconcerned with the outcome of the election to be bothered. Maybe they simply think the election doesn’t affect them or things they care about.

If any of you who are reading this are among those 90 million, think on this: the next U.S. president will set a tone for the nation, and his intentions will likely become law in some areas of particular importance to art and artists in this country.

If you think the world of art and artists is somehow removed from, and unaffected by, national politics — look again.

The two presidential candidates have distinctly different views on the importance of the arts in society, and the role of government in providing an environment in which the arts can thrive — notably in the form of government funding for the arts, art related programs in schools, public funding for museums, libraries, public art spaces and organizations like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Americans for the Arts Action Fund, a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting legislation favorable to the arts, has compiled a chart of the 2012 Presidential Candidates Arts Positions, and a Congressional Report Card that may help you understand where the candidates stand on issues affecting the arts in the U.S.

It matters.

There are countries in this world where people literally risk their lives to cast a ballot; here, all you have to do is get out from behind the computer for 20 minutes and drive down to the polls.

Really.

(Images above: Norman Rockwell)

In contrast to the cliché of the Bohemian starving artist, American painter Walter Gay lived something of a charmed life.

He was the nephew of an established Boston painter, Winkworth Allen Gay, through whom he met and studied with William Morris Hunt. At Hunt’s suggestion, Gay moved to Paris and studied with the respected French painter Leon Bonnat.

At Bonnat’s studio Gay met John Singer Sargent, which whom he would become lifelong friends. Like Sargent, Gay would remain an American expatriate, living the remainder of his life in France.

Gay married Matilda Travers, an heiress whose fortune would allow the couple to live in opulent surroundings, and also permit the artist to pursue his work without pressure. His work eventually was well received and his paintings were in high demand.

His earlier work included still life as well as figurative paintings and genre scenes, but the rooms and furnishings the luxurious spaces he shared with his wife, as well as the Gilded Age room interiors of others in their circle, would become the subjects of the later paintings for which he is best known.

His room interiors are the subject of an exhibit at the Frick Art & Historical Center in Pittsburgh, Impressions of Interiors: Gilded Age Paintings by Walter Gay, that is on display through January 6, 2013. (The provided link will likely change when the exhibition is over.)

The exhibit then moves to the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, Palm Beach where it will be on display from January 29 to April 23, 2012. The website for the Flagler has a slideshow of paintings from the show (the Frick Pittsburgh site, in an example of all too common museum website cluelessness, does not).

There is a book accompanying the exhibition, Impressions of Interiors: Gilded Age Paintings by Walter Gay. There is also another book, A Charmed Couple: The Art and Life of Walter and Matilda Gay, that I believe is out of print but still available.

There is also a “facsimile edition” of an older book, Paintings Of French Interiors…, but I don’t know what to expect from that edition in terms of image quality.

I find it particularly interesting that a number of Gay’s paintings of room interiors include his interpretation of artworks by other artists that were on display in the room, including The Fragonard Room (images above, top).