Boston and Philadelphia Museums Bet Artworks on Super Bowl Winner

For the 2018 Super Bowl, the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston and the Philadelphia Museum of Art made a wager: the losing museum would lend a painting from its collection to the winner. Philadelphia offered Benjamin West's "Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky" (1816), while Boston put forward John Singleton Copley's "James Warren (Mercy Otis)" (c. 1763). The Philadelphia Eagles defeated the New England Patriots, so Boston's painting will travel to Philadelphia. The MFA engaged in a social media campaign with the hashtag #MuseumBowl, including dressing a dog in Patriots gear and creating photomontages of artworks in team uniforms. This tradition dates back to 2014 when the Denver Art Museum lent Frederic Remington's "Broncho Buster" to the Seattle Art Museum after the Seahawks won. In 2015, Seattle lent Albert Bierstadt's "Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast" to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown after the Patriots won.