The philanthropic community in Philadelphia has partnered with a nationwide grassroots effort to keep Thomas Eakins's painting The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia permanently by enabling two of the city's cultural institutions to match the $68 million sale price of the painting.

The Annenberg Foundation has announced a $10 million grant for the purchase, while the Pew Charitable Trusts and philanthropists H.F. Lenfest and Joseph Neubauer will each contribute $3 million. In addition, the drive to secure the painting has resulted in more than two thousand donations from thirty states and the District of Columbia. "Eakins' iconic painting is by a Philadelphian, about Philadelphians, and set in Philadelphia," said Mayor John Street. "It belongs in Philadelphia, just as much as the Liberty Bell and our sports teams."

Thomas Jefferson University, which has owned the painting since 1878, agreed in early November to sell it for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. However, it offered art and governmental institutions in Philadelphia the opportunity to match the bid within forty-five days.

The painting, which will be purchased jointly by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art and exhibited publicly by both institutions, depicts Dr. Samuel D. Gross performing bone surgery in front of his students at Thomas Jefferson University's Medical College. Eakins, a Philadelphia native, studied anatomy under Dr. Gross.

"Walter Annenberg had great admiration for Thomas Eakins's work and, in particular, for The Gross Clinic," said Leonore Annenberg, president and CEO of the Annenberg Foundation and the wife of its late founder. "He would have wanted the painting to stay in Philadelphia and would be so pleased that we are ensuring that it will be accessible to Philadelphians and visitors from around the world for years to come."