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Two American art museums have raised the stakes ahead of tonight’s World Series opener, placing prized Claude Monet paintings on the line in a friendly cultural wager tied to the outcome of the championship.
When the Milwaukee Brewers face the Tampa Bay Rays in Game One of the 122nd World Series, both cities’ leading art institutions will be watching closely. The Milwaukee Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, have agreed that whichever city’s team wins the series will earn the right to borrow a Monet painting from the losing museum’s collection.
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Two Iconic Monet Works at Stake
Milwaukee is putting forward Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, painted around 1903. The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, is offering Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London, completed in 1904. Both works depict scenes along the River Thames and reflect Monet’s deep fascination with London’s atmospheric light and fog.
The Milwaukee Art Museum’s entry is particularly significant. It is the only Monet in the museum’s entire collection. The late Mrs. Albert T. Friedmann donated the painting upon her death in 1950, as part of a bequest of more than 40 objects to the institution. The work currently hangs on view at the museum and remains a firm favorite among visitors.
The St. Petersburg museum’s Monet is equally treasured. It normally resides in the museum’s main collection gallery, though it has temporarily moved to an upstairs space while its usual location undergoes installation work. MFA curator Stanton Thomas noted the timing could benefit traveling fans. “For visiting Brewers fans, it might be their only chance to see it,” he said in a statement. Monet produced more than a dozen plein-air paintings of London’s Houses of Parliament during extended visits to the city in the early 1900s.
A Tradition of Sports-Inspired Art Wagers
This is not the first time the Milwaukee Art Museum has entered into a sports-linked art bet. In 2011, the museum made a similar arrangement with the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh ahead of Super Bowl XLV, when the Green Bay Packers faced the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Packers won that game 31–25, with then-Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers leading the victory. As a result, the Carnegie Museum sent its Pierre-Auguste Renoir painting Bathers With Crab to Milwaukee for three months. The work featured as part of MAM’s exhibition titled “Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper.”
That earlier wager also left an unresolved thread. Should the two NFL teams ever meet again in the Super Bowl and Pittsburgh prevail, the Carnegie Museum could finally claim a temporary loan of MAM’s prized Gustave Caillebotte painting Boating on the Yerres, completed in 1877.
For now, however, attention turns to baseball. The Milwaukee Art Museum sits four miles east of American Family Field, where the Brewers play their home games. The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, stands just over a mile west of Tropicana Field. Both institutions will be hoping their city’s team delivers the win — and keeps their Monet at home.
