Philadelphia and Kansas City make an artful Super Bowl wager

• Peter Crimmins/WHYY
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  WHYY arts & culture reporter Peter Crimmins first became interested in radio in the fourth grade, when he hid a homemade, contraband crystal-diode radio in a shoebox and smuggled it into the Boy Scout summer camp.
  Subsequent radio projects were more successful. For eight years, Peter was the producer and host of a radio show about cinema — “Film Close-Ups” — on KALX in Berkeley, Ca., and was senior producer at Ben Manilla Productions in San Francisco (i.e. the paying gig). After wandering the freelance universe for a few years, he joined the WHYY staff. He rides his bike to work from South Philadelphia.

 AP Photo/Matt Rourke and nelson-atkins.org

(Left) The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has entered into a Super Bowl wager with its counterpart in Kansas City, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.

The museum of the losing city will send one of its masterworks, as a loan, to the museum of the winning city.

Both are major encyclopedic museums located in the heart of their respective cities. Neither director identified the piece of art they will put on the table, but both are absolutely certain the other will be the one who will travel with a loaned gift in hand.

The director from Kansas City, Julián Zugazagoitia, said he will offer visiting Philly representatives “something they’ll long remember after the Chiefs make short work of the Eagles.”

The director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Sasha Suda, said the artwork from Kansas City will be displayed in a prominent place and with Philly pride “when the Eagles soar to victory.”

The two museums will play up their rivalry beforehand on social media.

A similar wager was placed in 2018, when the Eagles beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Afterwards, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston sent the Philadelphia Museum of Art a portrait of Mrs. James Warren, painted by John Singleton Copley in 1763. It was on view at the Art Museum for about three months.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

”Mrs. James Warren (Mercy Otis)” by John Singleton Copley, which Museum of Fine Arts Boston sent the Philadelphia Museum of Art after the Eagles defeated the Patriots in Super Bowl LII.

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