'The Gross Clinic': Should It Stay Or Should It Go?

There is a knock-down, drag-out donnybrook going on in Philadelphia over the decision by Thomas Jefferson University, a major teaching hospital, to sell the Thomas Eakins masterwork, "The Gross Clinic," for a cool $68 million.

The painting would be displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a new museum planned by Wal-Mart heirs in Arkansas.

Jefferson says it could use the money. Many locals say that the painting is part of the city's rich cultural heritage and should stay. I'm with them.

The eight-foot-high canvas depicts Dr. Samuel Gross, a renowned Jefferson surgeon and educator, demonstrating the removal of diseased bone from a patient's thigh on the operating floor of a darkened ampitheater packed with Jefferson students, including Eakins himself, and the anguished figure of the patient's mother.

I have seen the painting several times and it is powerful.

Incidentally, a Jefferson alumnus had bought the painting from the Philadelphia artist in 1878 . . . for $200.

Dan Rubin has an excellent sum-up here at Blinq.