Why do all-white paintings sell for millions of dollars and end up in museums?

So-called “white paintings” are in museums all across the world and Robert Ryman’s all-white painting “Bridge” sold for a record $20.6 million at a Christie’s auction in 2015. How are these seemingly plain white paintings considered art and why is it that not anyone can pick up a tube of white paint and make one?

We talk to Elisabeth Sherman, an assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York about why there is much more to these paintings than meets the eye, and while you could have painted on of these priceless pieces of art, you didn’t.

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