Clark Celebrating Patriots Day With Super Bowl Prize
 Albert Bierstadt's 1870 epic painting 'Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast' will be at the Clark until July, the result of a Super Bowl bet. |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The New England Patriots weren't the only big winners on Super Bowl Sunday. Malcolm Butler's last-minute interception of Seattle Seahawks' quarterback Russell Wilson's pass also resulted in a victory for … the Clark Art Institute.
While the Patriots' dramatic victory brought Super Bowl rings to the team, it also brings a very special loan to the Clark. As a result of a friendly rivalry between the Clark and the Seattle Art Museum, Albert Bierstadt's epic painting "Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast" will spend its summer in the Berkshires.
The painting will be unveiled in the Clark's galleries at 1 p.m. on Friday, April 17, and will remain on view through July 19. To celebrate its arrival and to commemorate Patriots Day, the Clark will offer free admission to all visitors sporting New England Patriots or Seattle Seahawks gear on Monday, April 20.
In the days prior to the 2015 Super Bowl, the Seattle Art Museum approached the Clark to ask if the two museums might undertake a similar match-up. Each museum put the loan of one of its prized works on the line.
The stakes: a three-month loan of a painting would go to the winning museum. The arts-world throwdown, quickly dubbed #MuseumBowl, created an exceptional opportunity for football fans and art lovers to share in the fun of Super Bowl Sunday. The lineup pitted Seattle's magnificent Bierstadt against the Clark's beloved Winslow Homer's "West Point, Prout's Neck," creating a coastline-to-coastline competition between the grandeur of New England's rocky Atlantic coast and an equally majestic view of the Pacific coastal region. The losing museum would be responsible for crating and shipping their masterpiece to the winning institution.
Leading up to gameday, the Clark and SAM engaged in a lively social media showdown, including a Twitter battle that trended in major cities across the country. By the day of the big game, art and football lovers united in cheering for their home teams. With Butler's goal-line heroics securing a New England victory, the Clark's curatorial team began the happy task of planning for the installation of the massive (nearly 5 feet by 7 feet) painting.
"I have to admit that in the last few minutes of the game, we began thinking about what it would take to crate and ship our 'Prout's Neck' to Seattle," said Richard Rand, the Clark's Robert and Martha Berman Lipp Senior Curator. "I'm sure Malcolm Butler didn't realize it at the moment, but his heroics were a tremendous gift to New England art lovers as well as to football fans."
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