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- Peter Max, whose cheerful graphic images helped define 1960s hippie culture, has died at age 88.
- Sotheby’s Paris is auctioning a rare Monet painting of irises from the Jeanne Schlumberger collection, expected to break the country’s auction record.
- The Interior Department has detailed plans for 12 signs to be installed outside the National Museum of American History, which will warn the public that the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibitions are inaccurate.
The Headlines
IN MEMORIAM. Peter Max, whose cheerful graphic images helped define 1960s hippie and Summer of Love culture, has died at age 88, reports The New York Times. You know his colorful, kaleidoscopic imagery even if you don’t think you do. He is the hand behind psychedelic, beaming peace signs and suns with swirling planets and rainbow skies traversed by flower children in bellbottoms, funky hats, and long hair. Reprinted on all kinds of products and posters hung in the bedrooms of youth around the world, Max’s eye also made him a financial success, as the cheeky Life Magazineheadline attested: “Peter Max: Portrait of the artist as a very rich man.” As for his art practice, “My cosmic art subjects were always euphoric: Himalayan sages levitating under a shower of flowers beside snowcapped mountain peaks; faces and flowers exploding into a symmetrical cosmic butterfly … My inspiration came from the new youth movement in America and in return spoke to it.”