Superbowl Crazies

People do some really nutty things on Superbowl gameday! Tailgate parties in snow covered parking lots dressed in nothing but shorts and flip-flops, face-painting jobs that would scare the Grim Reaper, and of course some weird and freaky bets. One wager is based on whether Fergie will wear shorts during the halftime show. Another bet centers on which color Gatorade will be dumped on the winning coach. Seriously? Seriously!

Even some of the country's highest-browed art lovers are getting into the act. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh has bet a Renoir that the Steelers will win Sunday. The Milwaukee Art Museum took that bet — and put up a rare Gustave Caillebotte painting in return. Should the Steelers lose to the Packers, Milwaukee's prize will be one of Pierre Auguste Renoir's paintings of bathers. Lynn Zelevansky, director of the Carnegie Art Museum, describes Bathers With Crab as "a late Renoir, which is the Renoir that everybody loves — all those lovely pink maidens."

Should the Packers lose, however, the Carnegie Museum gets Gustave Caillebotte's Boating on the Yerres. Either way, the winning city will keep the borrowed painting for just a few months before returning it to the loser. Until then, Keegan says that they will receive a strong exhibit from a great museum in Milwaukee. Zelevansky feels exactly the same way: "We have a very strong Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection — but we don't have Caillebotte. I'm looking forward to bringing Caillebotte to the museum."