As the Milwaukee Brewers face the Tampa Bay Rays in the 2026 World Series, two museums have attached an artistic prize to the outcome. Under a friendly wager between the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida, the losing team’s museum will temporarily lend a Claude Monet painting to its counterpart.
The Brewers hold a 2–0 lead ahead of Game 3 in Tampa Bay, leaving them two victories from the title. A Milwaukee win would bring St. Petersburg’s Houses of Parliament: Effect of Fog, London to Wisconsin. Created in 1904, the painting depicts the Palace of Westminster and two silhouetted boats on the Thames beneath gray skies.
Should the Rays recover to win, St. Petersburg will receive Milwaukee’s only Monet: Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect, dated 1903. Its sunlit river contrasts with dark plumes of factory smoke. Whichever team secures its first World Series championship, two works from Monet’s London series will be temporarily reunited.
That series encompasses more than 100 canvases and 20 pastels depicting the Thames, making it Monet’s second-largest after Water Lilies. During repeated London visits in the late 1890s and early 1900s, he painted bridges from his Savoy Hotel balcony and Parliament from St. Thomas’ Hospital. Returning to the same views allowed him to explore subtle changes in weather and light.
Both wagered paintings are currently on display at their respective museums; loan details will follow the series. Milwaukee has participated in such exchanges before: after the Green Bay Packers defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2011 Super Bowl, it borrowed a Renoir from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art for three months.
