Archive for January, 2007

Now that the hubbub surrounding the attempted selling of the Thomas Eakins painting “The Gross Clinic” to a city other then its city of origin has somewhat subsided, I feel compelled to respond not so much to the selling but to the buying of the work.

Sixty-eight million dollars would have purchased a lot of work by living Philadelphia artists – those creative souls on the frontline of the struggle to make this city an artistic mecca.

Sixty-eight million dollars would have allowed the creation of an arts and cultural resource center similar to GoggleWorks in Reading, PA (see www.goggleworks.org) or The Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria, just outside Washington, D.C.
(see www.torpedofactory.org).

Instead, sixty-eight million dollars was spent on a single painting because some folks couldn’t bear the idea of it being somewhere outside its city of origin. Where would we be today with regard to the viewing of practically every piece of art in Philadelphia museums if the keep-it-in-the-city approach was practiced globally? Travel to Málaga, Spain to see a Picasso? To Vinci, Italy to see a Da Vinci?

Personally, I don’t believe any single work of art (even one of my own) is worth sixty-eight million dollars. I do, however, believe the living artists of Philadelphia are worth the investment.