The first Thomas Eakins canvas sold this Philadelphia cultural season brought $68 million. The third, Thomas Jefferson University’s portrait of Eakins’ anatomy professor, Dr. Benjamin H. Rand, brought a reported $20 million. One could surmise that the Pennsylvania Academy’s Cello Player, the second Eakins to go (and arguably a more important work than [...]
What’s the best way to experience art?
In an interview with Joel Rose for a December 23, 2003, NPR story, “Funding Debated for Barnes Art Collection” John Neff, then at Florida’s Naples Museum of Art, placed great value on “deep looking.” It was, he suggested, falling by the wayside. “Deep looking is something that is [...]
Tomorrow (March 13th, 2007) folks will gather to hear about the “Best and Worst Practices in Deaccessioning.”
Finally.
Ever since the recent sale of two major paintings by Thomas Eakins, the most signficant and interesting conversations have been private, quiet and out-of-public earshot. During this one-day seminar on the legal, ethical and professional guidelines for sewardship [...]
Last week’s sale of an Eakins was “a heart-wrenching decision” according to Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts board vice-chair Herbert Riband on today’s Radio Times. Listen to the full program here. And there are still many unanswered questions about the sale of Thomas Eakins’ The Cello Player to help defray debt incurred with the [...]
So, we won’t have to resort to re-enacting The Gross Clinic, after all. That’s how Eakins’ students consoled and humored the artist after his masterpiece was diverted from display among the American art at Philadelphia’s World’s Fair in 1876.
What role did The Sixth Square play in framing issues and introducing context during those 40 days when [...]
UPDATE - RadioTimes program (announced below) cancelled due to illness. Check the schedule at www.whyy.org for future programs.
If museology ever rises to the level of mythology, that would be the day Philadelphia rises to a challenge like the one it has faced these past forty days and forty nights.
Today it was announced: the Eakins [...]
It used to be that a “world-class city” (or the now popular forward-leaning term “next-great city” 
had an architectural style all its own. And then this style would inspire copies among the also rans.
That design idea is so old millenium.
When it comes to looking like a cultural destination, what does the new millennium have to [...]
As we look upon the scene of the last 38 days, we can sympathize with Eakins. As he depicted himself leaning into the scene of the surgery (seen here in a detail from a collotype reproduction) the artist was uncertain if his masterpiece would be embraced or rejected. On the eve of this possible rift [...]
A few weeks ago, Mayor John Street said he wanted to designate The Gross Clinic as an “historic object” using an untested and controversial ordinance. Today, we hear that the City has withdrawn that nomination, days before a debate scheduled at The Philadelphia Historical Commission.
What could this mean?
Could designation have required the painting to remain [...]
Those who visit Philadelphia’s College of Physicians on 22nd near Market tend to go for the exhibits of skulls, tumors and miscellaneous wet specimens. Since the start of this countdown for The Gross Clinic, visitors also encounter one of Eakins’ “Men of Medicine.” The College recently brought out its portrait of Dr. William Thomson and hung [...]
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