Painting’s Sale Like The Great Flood, Only Worse

It was announced Saturday that Jefferson Hospital would sell Thomas Eakins’ famed painting The Gross Clinic for $68 million, in order to help fund the hospital’s expansion. (More awesome-looking parking garages, please!)

The painting’s sale — to the National Gallery in D.C. and to Alice “Wal-Mart” Walton’s unbuilt Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas — has upset many of those connected with Jefferson Hospital, the Inquirer reports today. The hospital has rejected offers for the painting, which currently sits in Alumni Hall.

The loss of the painting is, of course, saddening. It’s a fantastic piece of art and to not have Philly’s Thomas Eakins’ masterwork — one the art establishment derided when it was originally painted — in Philadelphia is a little strange. But I don’t think it quite reaches the level of Hiroshima or Nagasaki:

The news, said David Paskin, senior associate dean at the university, hit Jefferson “like a nuclear blast.”

Yesterday, students, faculty members and alumni were still reeling from the shock, which caught everyone off guard, angering not a few by its seeming stealth.

Oh, I’m sorry. It’s worse than Hiroshima and Nagasaki because we warned them we’d bomb first. But, hey, we have until Dec. 26 for a counterattack! Huzzah!

A divisive deal [Inky]