The Gross Clinic Grosses Big

In a scene at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the young Indiana says of a jewel-encrusted cross: "That cross is an important artifact; it belongs in a museum." This is how, improbably, the scholar becomes an adventurer and man of action. And this is how the arcane pursuits of dedicated men find a footing in civic life.

By Indiana's thinking, the buying power of today's wealthy art collectors, which often outstrips the buying power of museums, is a cause for concern. When Alice Walton slapped down $68 m for Eakins's The Gross Clinic, there didn't seem to be much hope that the Philadelphia Art Museum would be able to match the bid. (To be fair, Walton was not buying the painting for private display; it would have been displayed at the National Gallery.)

Writing in today's Philadelphia Inquirer, Edward J. Sozanski touches on this in a discussion of The Gross Clinic and the role of art in civic life. "Walton waved a check for $68 million in front of the painting, instantly transforming it from a treasured work of art into a fungible asset." This is true insofar as treasured works of art and fungible assets are mutually exclusive things — which is to say insofar as those who really care about art are too strapped for cash to hold on to a painting worth $68 m.

But Sozanski muddies the issue when he says, "museums are refuges of last resort." He is correct to say that works of art in museums have lost their context, if by context we mean the artist's studio. Even if most works of art have been created for wealthy buyers, museums put works of art in the most meaningful possible context: the assembled works by artists great and obscure from the ages. In the Philadelphia Art Museum, you can view a painting of the crucifixion by Van der Weyden, and stroll over to another room and see Duchamp's The Large Glass. The Museum has arranged these works in roughly chronological and geographical order, but you are free to associate them in any way you please. It would be easy to draw parallels between the Van der Weyden and Reubens's Prometheus Bound (also at the Museum), which both use simple, dramatic compositions.

From this perspective, it would seem to make little difference whether The Gross Clinic goes to the National Gallery or to Philadelphia Art Museum. However, Sozanski and I are agreed that art is a vital part of public life (though, this point too seems to get lost in his lamenting how little the public notices art — I, for one, notice it). If the National Gallery had successfully purchased The Gross Clinic, Philadelphia would have been the poorer for it, and it is well for us Philadelphians that the Philadelphia Art Museum raised the capital to buy this highly treasured asset.