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Let It Go?

Welcome to Phillyville keeps hammering away at Thomas Jefferson University, linking what other bloggers are saying about its decision to cashier Thomas Eakin's masterwork, "The Gross Clinic," for $68 million, and ship it off to the National Gallery of Art and a new museum planned by Wal-Mart heirs in Arkansas. Jefferson says it could use the money.

Here's what some bloggers wrote:

The Illadelph: "There are entire blocks in Washington Square West that are routinely devoid of activity on account of Jefferson's nightmarish planning abilities and urban vision. (Kudos to them for the recent completion of their latest big project, the massive Chestnut Street parking garage. Excellent use of real estate. Really. A bang-up job all around. Those pretty banners hanging on the side totally make all those variances it got for hundreds of extra spaces et al. totally worth it — they look fantastic.)"

The Writing on the Wall: "Alice Walton continues to pillage the rest of the country to bring American art back to Arkansas."

Appalachian Greens: "Well, Ms. Walton. As long as you're throwing around your blood money, making taxpayers fund the health care of your workers so that you personally can be worth $18 billion, why don't you just buy the Liberty Bell too? It would look so pretty in front of the Crystal Bridges Museum! And hey. There's a statue standing in the New York harbor that you could ship on down to Bentonville, too. Just think of it! When your sorry corps of middle managers come for their yearly Group Think, they can punch the Liberty Bell! Pose by the Statue of Liberty!"

Matthew the Younger: "For the uninitiated, citizens of the Philadelphia art community of the 19th and early 20th century rank among some of the least-forward thinking, dumbest folk to ever populate the planet. We all of course know how they poo-pooed Dr. Barnes and how as a result, the PMA might have missed out on inheriting his collection. Oh well, it's just a tiny survey of a barely remembered group of artists."

Working Sculptor: "The City of Philadelphia should use eminent domain to protect the right of the public to have the Gross Clinic, by Eakins, stay in it's place of origin."

Eakin's piece - which Andrew Wyeth called "my favorite American painting" in an interview with the Inquirer's Stephan Salisbury - was painted in 1875 when the Philadelphia artist was 31.

Salisbury: The eight-foot-high canvas depicts Dr. Samuel Gross, a renowned surgeon and educator at Jefferson, demonstrating the bloody removal of diseased bone from a patient's thigh. The dark amphitheater, packed with Jefferson students, including Eakins himself, the anguished figure of the patient's mother, the monumental figure of Gross, bloodied fingers clasping a scalpel and poised in mid-gesture - all combine to create an unforgettable image.

Jefferson alumni bought it from the artist for $200 and donated it to the university in 1878.

Here's a minority opinion. Call me a cretin, but I can't get that worked up about it. Yes, that painting says Philadelphia more than any other painting I can think of, except the other Eakins' piece that most people can picture - his rower on the Schuykill.

If $68 million can be raised by Dec. 26 "The Gross Clinic" can stay where it is -- inside a hospital that doesn't get that many walk-in art lovers.

That's a bit of coin. It's more than the yearly earnings of the newspaper company, according to the last investment-bankers report I read before our sale this summer.

If someone around here has that much money, there are some more important things you could do with it.

You could buy for health insurance for 42,500 Pennsylvania children who don't have coverage.

You could hire 850 rookie cops to attack the murder spree we have around here.

Let it go. We've got bigger problems. Although it makes me wonder what we could get for that boxer standing outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Paul Burke
Posted 11/14/2006 04:50:49 PM
Whoever buys it better not leave it with Jefferson University - those people in charge of that institution have shown their real colors.  Raise the money, buy it and whisk it off to the Philadelphia Art Museum, Frankilin Institute or even the new Barnes Foundation (so what it's not a Renoir impressionist - they'll make room for it I'm sure).  Wonder of wonders there were more comments for the stupid Rocky Movie Prop.  For those of you debating endlessly about what art is vs. cultural junk - the example is right in front of you - it's called "The Gross Clinic" - and you don't get it at all. Wall-Mart is what's wrong with the world - cheap crap, child labor, slave wages, trade imbalance with China, taking advantage of the elderly, non-union, lack of health care, milking the public tax dollars, profit over people and community - and no taste.  Christies had to tell that bimbo what to buy - theres an old saying "you can't shine sh**"
N. Webster
Posted 11/14/2006 05:00:07 PM
What does healthcare have to do with anything?  Yes, 68million might cover alot of policemens' healthcare, but its not the city's money-its Jefferson's, which consist of a bunch of greedy idiots who are selling a city treasure to cover a mere 25% of their 400million dollar expansion.  They could easily get a loan to cover their costs, and guess what?  When they get ready to rip that 400 million dollar expansion down in 50 years, they would still have the painting.
enrico
Posted 11/14/2006 07:51:38 PM
I told you already: an exact replica of the racquet ball Rocky bounces around in the original Rocky, and 4 unused 2006 Phillies playoff tickets, section 204.

Offer still stands.
Ruby Legs
Posted 11/14/2006 09:40:06 PM
Dan,

I am hammering a way at this because I have been hammering away at for the better part of the last two years.  For the last fifty years, Philadelphians have watched their cultural heritage disappear to the hinterlands of this country.  I started my blog based on the idea that our city's forefathers effed up when they let the Athletics walk to Kansas City leaving us with the pitiful Phillies.  

It's an effing metaphor for the myopia that plagues this city's leadership.  

I know that a little too high concept for some but I'm not here to play to the LCD.  

No matter how much $68M seems like today, in 50 or 100 years, it is going to seem like a bargain.  How much do you think Rome or Milan would pay to get the Mona Lisa back???  And the Mona Lisa is not even an integral piece of Philadelphia's history.  It does not tell the story of the place were it was created.  

As I write in my most recent post where I "hammer away" at this issue - "We need to hold our elected officials responsible for this sale. The City long ago should have identified this painting as a priceless asset and made arrangements to prevent precisely this type of plunder. They did not."

They failed us.  

Sincerely,

Ruby Legs
Paula Bonini, MD
Posted 11/15/2006 06:44:02 AM
I think that for Jefferson to consider selling an important part of its heritage to an out of town institution is absolutely disgraceful – especially a less than distinguished institution funded by Wal-Mart, aside from the National Gallery of Art.  If "too few" people see "The Gross Clinic" in its present location, then why not move it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art – where it would also be lovingly cared for?  Could it be that Jefferson’s ultimate plan is to force the local people to "pay up" in order to easily raise capital for its building program, or am I unusually cynical?


I doubt that Johns Hopkins has any plans to sell its masterpiece, which was painted by John Singer Sargent, and depicts the founders of the medical school.  It is displayed in the main academic building on campus.  How many people are able to see it in Baltimore?  Why must Philadelphia suffer the wholesale dissolution of some of its remaining assets?  Banks are gone, department stores too, many corporate headquarters as well.  Is it the spirit of this city to decimate the finest, leaving maybe the Rocky statue?






lutton
Posted 11/15/2006 08:14:51 AM
Here's what I wrote over at my blog, Lutton Square
Saturday, November 11 An Illustration of the Privatization of America -a gross clinic indeed So a highly regarding teaching institution is forced to contemplate the sale of a seminal piece of its own history in order to fund its mission of medical education and health care. Thomas Jefferson University Hospital cannot educate the doctors, nurses and other medical professionals of the 21st century without an influx of money to build out its facilities. So an historical piece of artwork - Thomas Eakins' masterpiece The Gross Clinic, irrevocably identified with Philadelphia and the University where it was painted - has been optioned to the National Gallery and an Arkansas museum funded by Wal-Mart heirs. The sale will fetch $68 million if it goes through, although there is a 45 day window to allow the Philadelphia fine arts community to attempt to match the offer. One party to the purchase is the heiress of an American empire, an empire which continues to benefit from low wages here at home, cheap labor in far off contries, union busting tactics, state funded medical benefits for workers, tax advantages on both corporate and personal levels, etc, etc. As corporate empires replace smaller, family-run 'main street'-type businesses and regional companies, the private wealth those latter business would have created and kept in the area is concentrated into a much smaller subset of owners. Tax policy that benefits American empires while draining public treasuries across the country creates this horrendous situation. States are forced to spend tax payer money on primary care medical benefits for workers, and therefore don't have money to fund the education and training of the next generation of American medical professionals. Instead billions of dollars are offloaded into private hands, hands which then contemplate trading some of that money in exchange for precious possessions. American history is sold into private hands to finance the systems which care for the entire population--systems which rightfully should be financed by our governments for the benefit of all Americans. It is a moral failure that the future of American medicine is subservient to the needs of American heirs and heiresses.
Tom Goodman
Posted 11/15/2006 08:29:57 AM
The President and Board of Jefferson claim they are "not in the art history" business and that further custodial care of Eakins' masterpiece lies outside their "mission".  In other words, they continue to see patients in the narrow context of bodies to be treated and their spirits be damned.  How enlightened, no matter what the final disposition of the "Gross Clinic".

The argument that few people see the painting is a red herring.  That situation can be easiliy remedied by a permanent loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  
Doomsy
Posted 11/15/2006 08:35:18 AM
Dan,

Though your point is well taken, I respectfully disagree with you. Trying to sell "The Gross Clinic" is my "line in the sand," if you will (though trying to sell the Tiffany painting at the Curtis Center ranked right up there also).

Aside from the secrecy involved in this shameful episode, this is a sad development because it's another attempt to erode the culture of this city for a quick buck. Besides, you know as well as I that the funds that could be raised aren't going to be used to hire cops or provide health insurance for children (and would never be). As Herbert Cohn said yesterday, they're going to be used to modernize part of the hospital that could be obsolete in 30 years anyway, and the painting will still be gone.

Besides, the scenario you presented shouldn't be one to consider anyway if government did what it was supposed to do (re: cops and health insurance). Why should "The Gross Clinic" be sold because of the incompetence of others?
Dennis
Posted 11/15/2006 08:54:37 AM
The most amazing thing here is that WalMart money is being used to purchase something that wasn't made in China . . . .

And if there is all this WalMart money floating around, why is it that taxpayers have to fund the health care costs of their employees?
Sasquatch
Posted 11/15/2006 09:07:25 AM
To equate providing healthcare and hiring cops to purchasing a work of art is ridiculous--it's not like there is an account somewhere with $68 million in it that can be spent as the city pleases.  That's just a stupid comment.

So is it better to leave it at the college where no one sees it, or send it to Podunk, Arkansas where no one will see it?  My impression is that if the city or someone in the city buys it, it would be moved to wherever it was sold.  So to say that it will remain at Jefferson is dumb too.

This Blog is full of ill-conceived ideas.
Draco
Posted 11/15/2006 11:27:30 AM
Welcome to our New Guilded Age, where the super-rich can buy and sell whatever they want and some of our so-called civic leaders lack the civic pride and imagination to put our city's heritage ahead of a quick buck.  Meanwhile, the most significant recent contributions to our cultural life are a movie prop sculpture of a boxer in front of the Art Museum and the imminent arrival of slot machines.  
TrekMedic251
Posted 11/18/2006 10:12:25 PM
Tom Goodman brings up a great idea re: putting in the Art Museum.  I simply ask, can the Annenbergs or Kimmels front the money?

BTW - Tom, Jefferson Medical College and TJUH are NO place for a work of art like that.  It isn't a numbers/HMO/patients issue anymore, its simply isn't the right venue for a work of art of that caliber.
Dr. Rick Lippin
Posted 11/19/2006 09:46:54 PM
The sale, the way the sale was managed and the quote that embodies the ignorance of Jefferson Chair Brian Harrison "The painting,however,is really a symbol" Philadelphia Inquirer, Thurs Nov 16, says it all. These leaders of contemporary US Medicine which is in rapid realtime meltdown as a profession need to step dow now