Thursday 28 January 2010

smackdown at the museum

This story from Deadspin is brilliant. In a nutshell, the directors of the New Orleans and Indianapolis art museums are getting stuck in with Super Bowl trash talk.

The Indianapolis guy proposed a wager, with the loan of a minor-ish work of art as the prize. Soon the directors were tweeting that they were spackling bits of wall ready for the new arrival. After a process of raising and re-raising, which involved slagging off each other's chocolate box offers and so on, Indy put up a magnificent and massive Turner, suggesting NO's Marie Antoinette by Vigee Lebrun would make a suitable return stake.



NO replied:
I'm glad to see that Max has gotten serious. Certainly the Turner painting in Indianapolis is a masterpiece, worthy of any great museum. Regretably the size, over ten feet high with its original elaborate frame, and the fragile condition of New Orleans' Portrait of Marie Antoinette prohibits it from traveling. I propose instead our large and beautiful painting by Claude Lorrain, Ideal View of Tivoli, 1644. This great French artist is considered the father of landscape painting and was one of Turner's great inspirations. These two paintings would look splendid hanging together in New Orleans -- or miracle of miracles, in Indianapolis.
Cool. Also, unless I don't know anything at all about the world, the start of a soon-to-be-beloved annual Super Bowl tradition.

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