Eakins and "Fakins": Thomas Jefferson University's Rehang

Thomas Eakins, "Portrait of Professor William S. Forbes," 1905

Another story I missed while I was in Europe was the sale of the third and last remaining Thomas Eakins (above) from Thomas Jefferson University's collection. The Philadelphia Inquirer story had no information about the buyer, so I contacted the usual suspect, Alice Walton's voracious Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and got the following reply from its director, Robert Workman:

Sorry, Lee. As you know, it is our policy to not comment on the acquisitions activity of Crystal Bridges.

Actually, Bob, I didn't know. In fact, there was an immediate announcement in April when Eakins' "Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand," also jettisoned by Jefferson, entered the nascent Arkansas museum's collection. The museum's website provides information about 13 key acquisitions. Museums are not always transparent about their deaccessions, but major accessions are usually news, not secrets.

If Walton did buy the Eakins for her museum, she has nothing to hide: If there's anyone to blame for ill-advised deaccessions, it's the seller not the buyer. In this instance, when the seller was a medical school, not a cultural institution, the sale may have been regrettable; it may have been a slight to the memories of the university luminaries portrayed in the paintings; but it was not a violation of the institution's professional mission.

That said, it's risable that the medical school continues to vaunt on its website The Jefferson Art Tradition, highlighting the establishment in 1982 of its Eakins Gallery for the three (now vanished) masterpieces. That gallery still displays artworks, but the only Eakins in evidence is by his wife, Susan MacDowell Eakins---a portrait of French painter Julien Lemordant, on long-term loan from the French Benevolent Society of Philadelphia.

Even more preposterous is the university's decision to substitute a copy of Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" in place of the real thing, now jointly owned by the Philadelphia Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The replica should be called "The Bogus Clinic." Philly wags have another name for it: "The Fakins."

Truth in advertising: "The Jefferson Art Tradition" should be renamed "The Jefferson Art Perdition."