“Clinic” to Stay in Hometown

By: John Dorfman

February 2007

PHILADELPHIA—Thomas Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic,” 1875, will remain in Philadelphia. A consortium of donors reached an agreement with Thomas Jefferson University to match the $68 million price that the medical school had been offered for the painting by both the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the forthcoming Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. The work will be shared by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

“It’s a tremendous victory for the city and the region,” says Joe Grace, spokesman for Mayor John F. Street’s administration. He adds that this incident has spurred the mayor to support legislation to “establish a registry of all art objects of historical significance” in the Philadelphia area and set up a process by which local institutions would have 90 days to match any offer that would take listed artworks out of the city. In the case of “The Gross Clinic,” the deadline to match the offer was 45 days.