Museums raise Super Bowl stakes with painting wager

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The Clark Art Institute and the Seattle Art Museum have decided to make the Super Bowl hoopla more highbrow.

In honor of Sunday’s tilt between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks, the Williamstown museum has entered into a friendly wager with its Pacific Northwest counterpart. Should the Patriots win, the SAM will send the Clark a painting for three months; if the Seahawks pull out the victory, the Clark will ship art westward. (Shipping expenses will be paid by the losing city’s museum.)

The Clark is putting “West Point, Prout’s Neck,” a 1900 painting by Boston-born Winslow Homer, on the line. Homer’s tableau captures part of the Maine coastline “fifteen minutes after sunset — not one minute before,” he wrote.

The SAM, meanwhile, is wagering with “Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast,” an eight-foot 1870 painting by Albert Bierstadt that depicts the Northwest’s rough-hewn coastal landscape.

“The way we see it, nobody loses with this wager,” Clark director Michael Conforti said in a statement. “Albert Bierstadt was raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, so we will be very happy to welcome the work of a native son back to New England following the Patriots’ win on game day. Having just opened our new building, we’ve got just the right spot to show this remarkable Bierstadt and know our visitors will love the chance to see it.”