Template:Adminpick/January 2016

August 12, 2003

Arts and Entertainment Section

The spirit of Aspenvale’s most controversial expressionist painter lives on in the home of Aubrey Silven, 22-year-old philanthropist and daughter of the late Silven Pharmaceuticals founder and CEO, Donald Silven.

Donald succumbed to lung cancer in mid-March this year. The company is now under new management and the young heiress is using her percentage of the profits to pursue a long-coveted dream: buying and selling art.

“I’ve been an artist since childhood,” said Aubrey. “Art embodies the heart and soul of its creators, of the culture they were brought up in. Schools’ve been phasing fine art classes out of their curricula and replacing them with graphic design labs, and it’s wrong. There’s no soul in graphic design, y’know? You can’t express anything with corporate logos or catalog page layouts. And self-expression is important for kids. We'd probably have less violence in schools if only the adults would pull their heads out of their asses and realize it, and if our country would start taking mental health more seriously than profit margins.”

Aubrey has purchased a dozen galleries, some which she donated to schools all over the country. The city has been in an uproar since she excavated the gallery of infamous prodigy Cameron DeVry from the North Hill Art Museum’s storeroom — frightening paintings that haven’t seen the light of day for several years.

“Miss Silven approached us shortly after the tragedy,” said the museum’s chief curator, Tim Jones, “when the governor threatened to close the museum if I didn’t burn DeVry’s paintings. Art should not be punished for the artist’s transgressions. I agreed to sell the DeVry gallery to Miss Silven around that time — we were both desperate to save it — and her father, gracious man that he was, bought it in his daughter’s name. The paintings have been her property ever since and we’ve simply been holding them for her.” (Read more...)