Sale of Eakins’ medical painting stirs controversy in Philadelphia
Jefferson Medical College plans to use proceeds for campus improvements. Art patrons say the iconic piece belongs in the city.
Dr. Samuel D. Gross stands next to the patient with light cascading across his face and blood on his uplifted hand. Other physicians work intently as Dr. Gross turns to address medical students in the amphitheatre. To his right, a woman covers her face as dead bone is cut from her relative’s thigh. A new surgical technique is in progress, one that will replace the standard of the time: amputation.
The 1875 painting “The Gross Clinic,” by Thomas Eakins, which captures a dramatic moment in medical history, now finds itself at the center of a drama as several Philadelphia institutions vie to determine the portrait’s fate.
In mid-November 2006, Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia agreed to sell the painting for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. The museums plan to display the portrait on a rotating basis. The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts immediately began a fundraising campaign when the sale was announced Nov. 11. Local art museums and government institutions had until Dec. 26, 2006, to match the offer.
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has lent its support to the campaign. “You have a world-famous surgeon doing an operation on a Philadelphia patient in a Philadelphia institution. If it were not to be in Philadelphia it would be destructive to our medical heritage and our artistic heritage,” said George M. Wohlreich, MD, director and CEO of the college.
source: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/01/01/prsb0101.htm
p.s. :cb: