Portrait of Benjamin H. Rand
Thomas Eakins, 1874
This time around, there wasn’t much controversy.
The Philadelphia medical school that sold Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic has now sold a second Eakins from its collection, Portrait of Benjamin H. Rand. The painting was sold to the Crystal Bridges Museum of Bentonville, AK (NYT report). The still-unbuilt museum was thwarted in its bid to buy The Gross Clinic by a consortium of local groups determined to see the historic painting stay in Philadelphia. Apparently Crystal Bridges really wanted an Eakins, and settled for the lesser-known Portrait.
What makes these sales sad is that the paintings are not merely owned by Thomas Jefferson University, they’re part of its history. Eakins studied there; both paintings depict faculty at the university’s medical school. Like a modest home that appreciates beyond its retired owners’ dreams, becoming an unwelcome tax burden, the Eakins paintings have become too valuable to keep. In selling them, and in planning to sell its third and last Eakins, the university claims to be raising desperately needed funds for educational purposes – implying that art isn’t educational, or that it is proportionately less educational than medical equipment. It’s unfortunate that they have to choose.