Chicago’s Field Museum nets $17 million auctioning some of its art. “Included in the sale were 31 paintings of American Indians and bison by artist and adventurer George Catlin, representing the bulk of the Field’s Catlin collection, which the museum has owned since shortly after it was founded in 1893. The decision this fall to auction the Catlins, which the artist is thought to have painted during his travels in the American frontier in the 1830s, generated controversy within the museum and on the Field’s board of trustees, but museum officials said the sale was part of a strategy to focus its holdings on scientific materials and to expand its collections.”