Wow.
I feel like I've just stepped into a time warp.
...anything but ordinary...
I heard on the local news of my NPR station that a group of local concerns attempting to maintain a Philadelphia home to Thomas Eakins' famous paintint, The Gross Clinic, has raised about one-third of the $68 million needed to keep the painting in Philadelphia. They look to prevent Thomas Jefferson University's sale of the painting to a partnership of the National Gallery and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, slated to be open in 2009, in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Tax-deductible donations to the Fund for Eakins' Masterpiece can be made online at:The Philadelphia Museum of Art (a fabulous institution, I might add) offers the following information about tax-deductible donations to the Keep Eakins Fund:
www.philamuseum.org/keepeakins/
Checks payable to the Fund for Eakins' Masterpiece may be sent to:
Fund for Eakins' Masterpiece
c/o the Philadelphia Museum of Art
Box 7646, Philadelphia, Pa.
19101-7646.
There is also a Fund for Eakins' Masterpiece hotline for information at:
215-684-7762.
If the efforts to acquire the Eakins masterpiece are unsuccessful, we will contact you to find out if you wish to have your contribution returned or if you would be willing to have your contribution used to keep other significant works of art in the Philadelphia region for public enjoyment and education.Here's why I think this is important and why I will be making a small contribution after I'm done writing this post.
"Brother Bronislaus Luszcz of the Franciscan Missionary Brothers started in 1938 and spent 22 years building the Black Madonna Shrine and Grottoes."Brother Bronislaus built walls of broken bits of crockery, stones and cement and decorated them with pieces of glass, costume jewelry, tiny ornaments, seashells. I am not Catholic. I appreciate some of their rituals but most of Catholicism sticks in my craw. Yet I loved the Black Madonna Shrine. It spoke to me of the intensely personal relationship one can have with God. It preached inner peace and the joy that brings and the opening of the heart to the world that results from meditation on the divine.
Here comes a bitchy post because I'm premenstrual and bitchy as hell and just because I can. Nyah.
I read this in Thursday's Philly Inquirer and am totally psyched about it. It seems scientists have been able to withdraw amniotic fluid, extract the stem cells and use them to grow heart valves in vitro. The idea is to use a fetus's own cells to create these valves so they are ready (they grow in 4-6 weeks) for use in a newborn with congenital heart valve anomolies.
As I suspected might happen, there is a movement afoot in Philadelphia, spurred by local art and civic organizations, to keep Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic here in the city. Two major influences behind this move are the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins studied.
I haven't had a terribly keen interest in blogging recently. Life was busy for a while before the election and I've been spending a lot of time reading political stuff since then. I've had even less interest in looking at the blog stats here. But today I went to Technorati to check links to NOP and found a new one, from Phawker. There's no "about" that I can find on the site but this seems to be a Philly-based journalist. There are some interesting items there...politics, culture, news, media...many of the things I hold near to my heart.
This is a painting entitled The Gross Clinic which was painted by Philadelphia's own Thomas Eakins in 1875. The painting has been the property of Thomas Jefferson University in downtown Philly since its purchase in 1878. It has been prominently displayed at the university since the alumni association bought it for $200. At some points, it has been displayed so it was visible from the street. It has never been permanently housed outside of Philadelphia since it was painted here.
Shock bordering on anguish spread through Philadelphia's cultural, medical, philanthropic and political communities yesterday as news of the impending sale of Thomas Eakins' incomparable painting, The Gross Clinic, hit home across the region.
But in the midst of the immediate trauma, efforts are already stirring to save what many believe is the very heart of Philadelphia's cultural identity.
"Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic should never, never, never leave Philadelphia, where it was painted," said saddened artist Andrew Wyeth. "It is my favorite American painting."
"We have to give it our best shot," said Donald Caldwell, board chairman of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. "It's going to take all of us in the community."
That sentiment echoed around town.
"People have a lot of feeling about this," said Dr. Geno Merli, a member of the executive committee of the Thomas Jefferson University Alumni Association. "There is shock... . But maybe the alumni will rise to the occasion and save the painting for Philadelphia."
The painting, which is widely seen as Eakins' masterpiece and an indelible part of the Philadelphia cultural landscape since its creation in 1875, will be sold by its owner, the university, to a partnership of a new museum being built by Wal-Mart heirs in Arkansas and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
To retain the painting here, local institutions and government agencies have been given 45 days to match the price tag of $68 million, a record for an Eakins and for a pre-World War II American painting.
The clock started ticking Friday, when the Jefferson board approved terms of the sale.
After Dec. 26, if no local match is made, the painting will be a part of Philadelphia's past, a memory haunting a depleted cultural landscape.
"I was heartsick at the news," said Stephanie Naidoff, the city's director of commerce. "I'm going to see if I can convene a meeting of stakeholders to see what the sentiment is and what might be done."
She declined further comment.
"It's such a startling piece of news," said David Haas, board chairman of the William Penn Foundation and former board chairman of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.
"I had no idea," Haas said, speaking as a private individual. "I was flabbergasted."
Painted when the artist was 31, The Gross Clinic was intended by Eakins to portray the extraordinary scientific and cultural achievements of Philadelphia. 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.
Although some 19th-century critics were shocked by the bloody portrayal, Jefferson alumni were so moved that they purchased the painting from the artist for $200 and donated it to the university in 1878.
The painting has been in Jefferson's possession ever since, occasionally traveling for exhibitions, most recently in the Eakins retrospective mounted by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2002.
For many years, the painting hung in the college building on Walnut Street, between 10th and 11th Streets. (It is now located, with two Eakins portraits, in Jefferson's alumni hall on Locust Street between 10th and 11th Streets and is available for public viewing at no charge.)
"You could see the painting from the street when it was in the college building," said Julie S. Berkowitz, the university's art historian who retired in 2003. "All the old guard would come in to see it. It was part of their daily life because they would pass it every day."
"I'm extremely upset," she added. "First, that it's leaving Jefferson, and secondly, that it is leaving the Philadelphia area. I saw it every day for 12 years."
Kathleen A. Foster, curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, called The Gross Clinic "Eakins' greatest painting" and one that is inseparable from Philadelphia, the city where he was born, raised and died in 1916. His ashes are interred in Woodlands Cemetery in West Philadelphia.
"It's not a generic painting that can be hung anywhere," Foster added. "It is all about his life, the life of the city, and the life of one of the city's greatest heroes, Dr. Gross. It is about the connections between the science, education and art of the place where it was made."
Brian Harrison, Jefferson's board chairman, said trustees formed a small committee three months ago to explore sale of the painting. Proceeds would be used to help fund the university's ambitious $400 million to $500 million plan to transform its Center City campus and educational programming.
Christie's auction house was brought in as an adviser and quickly recommended that the university pursue a private sale to "maximize the value," said Marc Porter, Christie's president.
Porter contacted the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the as-yet unbuilt Arkansas museum backed by the Wal-Mart heirs' Walton Family Foundation. Heiress Alice Walton, whose net worth is pegged at $18 billion by Forbes magazine, wanted to pursue the painting after seeing it in Philadelphia.
Walton, who is a member of the National Gallery's Trustees Council, was also behind the Crystal Bridges purchase of the New York Public Library's Kindred Spirits by Asher Durand last year. Acquisition of that painting for a record $35 million ignited considerable controversy in New York when Walton easily outbid a partnership of the Metropolitan Museum and National Gallery.
For The Gross Clinic, the National Gallery moved from being a Walton competitor to a collaborator. Officials refused to break down financing for the deal, although a National Gallery spokeswoman said her museum would participate financially in the purchase and would be a co-owner.
Porter, of Christie's, said that he wanted to avoid New York-style acrimony this time in Philadelphia and therefore suggested that a clause be added to the sale agreement granting local institutions 45 days to match the sale price. Crystal Bridges, he said, suggested bringing the National Gallery on board.
"That was really smart," said Caldwell, Pennsylvania Academy chairman. "It shows Jefferson isn't being cavalier. She [Alice Walton] got so much flak in New York, this will help her with the flak here.
"But 45 days is an extraordinarily short time when you're talking about $68 million."
Yet Anne d'Harnoncourt, director and chief executive officer of the Art Museum, said that cultural and civic leaders had started to explore possible options.
"I really, really hope that Philadelphia institutions and individuals can work together to keep it here," she said.
Want to See It?
What: The Gross Clinic, by Thomas Eakins.
Where: The Eakins Gallery, Jefferson Alumni Hall, Thomas Jefferson University, 1020 Locust St., Center City. Request entry at information desk, main entrance.
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday-Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday; last visitors admitted at 3:45 p.m. Limit of 15 visitors at a time.
Admission: Free
Information:www.tju.edu/eakins/
eakinsgallery.cfm
Egalia has posted an article by Paul Krugman over at Tennessee Guerilla Women about populism in the recent election. I love it! Here's (imho) the best part:
Ever since movement conservatives took over, the Republican Party has pushed for policies that benefit a small minority of wealthy Americans at the expense of the great majority of voters. To hide this reality, conservatives have relied on wagging the dog and wedge issues, but they’ve also relied on a brilliant marketing campaign that portrays Democrats as elitists and Republicans as representatives of the average American.Fabulous! We are tired of the very few rich getting richer and the many, many poor sinking further down into the abyss! It's about time someone started talking seriously about raising the minimum wage and reining in the immense power of the big drug companies!
This sleight of hand depends on shifting the focus from policy to personal style: John Kerry speaks French and windsurfs, so pay no attention to his plan to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and use the proceeds to make health care affordable.
This year, however, the American people wised up.
I found a wonderful letter to the editor of the New York Times this morning. I couldn't have said it any better. I wonder if Ken has a blog?...
tags: 2006 election / US politicsTo the Editor:
Now that our electorate has finally woken from its stupor, we should ask ourselves why it took six years to recognize the incompetence and demagogy of this administration and the responsibility of the Republican leadership that blindly followed its lead.
The damage done is enormous, in Iraq, in the United States and around the world. Years have been squandered while the critical issues of our time have gone unattended.
How and why were we fooled?
We have a fascination with personalities instead of policy, a desire to be entertained rather than enlightened, and a need to have an enemy to define us and give our lives meaning.
Thankfully, our democracy is still functioning, though we will not see really meaningful progress until we can disconnect the electoral and legislative processes from the flow of corporate cash.
Let’s not forget that the Senate voted to give President Bush authority to start a war in Iraq. Our euphoria should be short-lived, and our vigilance should be redoubled.
Ken Swensen
Pound Ridge, N.Y., Nov. 8, 2006