Leave It to the Artsy Folk to Make the Best Super Bowl Bet Ever

Each year prior to the Super Bowl, the mayors of the two cities whose teams are involved in the game make an always-lame bet on the game. This year’s bet between New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard is particularly lame (More on this later.) Thankfully, the owner of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art have stepped up to the plate to make things really interesting.

After much trash-talking over Twitter which led to their upping the stakes over and over, IMA’s Maxwell Anderson and NOMA’s E. John Bullard finally settled on a bet in which both are laying down one of their collection’s prized treasures: IMA is betting a J.M.W. Turner painting, “The Fifth Plague of Egypt,” while NOMA is betting Claude Lorrain’s “Ideal View of Tivoli.” Both are considered masterpieces.

After the wager was agreed upon, Bullard got in one last bit of Saints smack:

Thanks for accepting the wager of a Claude from New Orleans for a Turner from Indianapolis. But this is definitely the Saints year. They are the Dream Team and in New Orleans we know that dreams come true. Geaux Saints!!!”

As for the mayor’s bet, the mayor of Indianapolis is wagering the “famous” shrimp cocktail from a local restaurant, which he says is good because the cocktail sauce is “spicy.” Really dude? You’re offering to send shrimp, which were probably caught in the Gulf of Mexico off of Louisiana’s coast, along with your “spicy” sauce, to the mayor of New Orleans if the Colts lose? YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME! Don’t you people in Indiana have a green bean casserole or a tater tot salad or something, ANYTHING, that is a true representation of the local cuisine?