Two Museums Bet Monets on the World Series

The Milwaukee Art Museum in Wisconsin and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg in Florida have placed a bet on baseball's World Series, and the prize is a painting by Claude Monet. The winning city's museum gets to borrow a Monet from the other museum's collection.

The wager is tied to the World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays. The Milwaukee Art Museum announced the bet on October 23, 2026, in a museum press release titled "Milwaukee Art Museum Bets a Monet on a Brewers World Series Victory."

Each museum put up one of its Monets. Milwaukee wagered Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, painted around 1903. The St. Petersburg museum wagered Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London, from 1904. Both paintings show views along the River Thames in London.

The Milwaukee painting is the museum's only Monet. It came to the museum in 1950, when Mrs. Albert T. Friedmann left it to the institution in her will, as one of more than 40 objects. Under the wager, if Tampa Bay wins, the St. Petersburg museum may borrow the Milwaukee work. If Milwaukee wins, the Milwaukee museum may borrow the Florida painting.

The idea is not new for Milwaukee. In 2011, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh made a similar bet on the Super Bowl. After the Pittsburgh Steelers lost 31-25 to the Green Bay Packers, Carnegie's Renoir painting Bathers With Crab travelled to Milwaukee for three months.

For fans of either team, the stakes are simple. A loss means a museum's favourite painting goes on a trip, and a museum crate team gets busy. Packing, shipping and insuring a painting for a loan take careful planning, and the museums will handle those details if the bet pays off.

The series result will decide which painting moves, and for how long. Until then, both museums hold their Monets in place.