From the Department of Double-Takes: art lovers, talking trash about football

I really think we’re getting the better of this bet.

In a friendly but also serious wager, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art are each putting an Impressionist work of art on the line for their favored Super Bowl team.

How lovely would it be not only to see the Packers win but also to have a nice little Renoir to gloat over, sent by the losing Pittsburgh-based museum to MAM.

“I’m confident that we will be enjoying the Renoir from the Carnegie Museum of Art very soon,” said MAM director Daniel T. Keegan in a statement that barely concealed his ardor for the dappled painting of lounging, fleshy females. “I look forward to displaying it where the public can enjoy it and be reminded of the superiority of the Green Bay Packers.”

That “dappled painting of lounging, fleshy females” is Renoir’s “Bathers with Crab:”

If the Packers win, Pittsburgh loans that to us. And if the Packers lose:

Of course, should the Packers lose to the Steelers, MAM will have to pack up one of its very best artworks, “Boating on the Yerres” by Gustav Caillebotte, and send it off to the Carnegie.

So lemme get this straight: if the Packers win, we get (borrow) a painting of naked women picnicking by a lake by an artist so famous even I’ve heard of him. If the Steelers win, they get a painting of guys in funny hats paddling boats. By some guy I never heard of.

Tell ‘em, Mick: