"The Gross Clinic" painting chosen as next Penn Reading Project selection | Interactive graphic

Everyone's a critic.

Or at least everyone in the class of 2013 will be this fall when they evaluate Thomas Eakins' painting The Gross Clinic as the next Penn Reading Project selection.

The Office of the Provost, the Council of Undergraduate Deans and the Office of College Houses and Academic Services announced their unusal choice last week. All previous selections have been written texts, ranging from Euripides' The Bacchae - the first Penn Reading Project in 1991 - to Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish this past fall.

Though a visual text "didn't seem practical" during early discussions, the deciding council agreed that this work would be the "perfect piece," said project director David Fox.

"It doesn't deliver a quick, flashy message and then lose interest," Art History professor Michael Leja wrote in an e-mail. "The more time one spends looking at it, analyzing it, learning about its history, the more interesting and complicated it becomes."

The piece's history highlights its importance across a range of academic fields, Fox said.

"Artistically, it was a bold argument about the future of modern art as it was envisioned in 1876," Leja said. "That future involved the intersection of art and science, so the painting has importance for the history of science also - especially with regard to 19th-century surgical procedures and medical education."

Fox and Leja also stressed its importance in Philadelphia history.

In 2006, Jefferson Medical College was offered the $70 million painting by a private collector who planned to put it in an out-of-state museum, Fox explained. However, a campaign involving the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and local citizens succesfully advocated to keep it in Philadelphia.

"It was a really important statement in how necessary the arts are to civic culture," Fox said.

He continued, saying the main goal of this year's project is helping "students to understand that visual interpretation is also a kind of scholarly and academic art."

"As a visual studies major, I'm a little biased," said College junior Alex Berger, chairwoman of the Student Council on Undergraduate Education, "but I think it's something most Penn students don't get to experience during their time here. It's a novel approach to the Reading Project."

The groups involved in selecting the work are in the process of collecting supporting analytical readings to add to the interpretation experience. They are also in discussion with PMA about displaying The Gross Clinic, in addition to other of Eakins' paintings, Fox said.

He mentioned that there would also be a Web site, a podcast and "visual excerpts" to look at.

"The class of 2013 will love getting to know it," Leja said.

And, Fox added, so will all the faculty members and administrators involved in the process.

"Everybody recognizes this as a new challenge," he said. "We're looking forward to figuring it out ourselves."

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