Hometown Baseball Teams Wager Monet Paintings
Yes, you read that correctly. Two art museums are engaged in a friendly bit of sports betting: The winning city (temporarily) gets a Monet from the other city’s collection.
As the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays face off in the 2026 World Series, there’s more than baseball on the line. In addition to the Commissioner’s Trophy, the two teams are playing for works of fine art worth many millions of dollars.
The Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Florida, have agreed to a friendly wager: The museum from the losing team’s city will send a Claude Monet painting from its collection to the winner’s museum, where it will have a “victory lap in the galleries,” according to a statement from the Milwaukee Museum of Art.
“When I moved to Milwaukee, I became a part of the Brew Crew,” Kim Sajet, director of the Milwaukee Art Museum, says in the statement. “They’re the best team in baseball, and I’m backing them with one of our most beloved paintings. Two Monets will look incredible in our galleries … Go Brewers!”
Klaudio Rodriguez, executive director and CEO of the Museum of Fine Arts in sunny Florida responds: “We admire Kim’s enthusiasm, but we think Milwaukee’s Monet would enjoy a little Florida vacation. We’re backing the Rays all the way, and we’re ready to welcome Milwaukee’s masterpiece to St. Petersburg. Let’s see Milwaukee put its Monet where its mouth is.”
No matter which team wins their first World Series title, two of Monet’s Thames paintings will be reunited, at least temporarily. Houses of Parliament and Waterloo Bridge are currently on view at their respective institutions. The details of the winning loan will be announced after the World Series concludes.
“I adore London; it’s a mass, a whole, and it’s so simple. But what I love more than anything in London is the fog,” Monet told art dealer René Gimpel in 1920.
