Art museums are betting on Super Bowl XLIX with a painting exchange. Since the competing teams for 2015 are from Seattle and New England, the museum wager is between the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) and The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA. The bet is one oil painting from the collection of each museum. The winning museum will display the work from the losing museum for three months.

Both museums have bet a work by an American artist from the 19th century. The Seattle Art Museum has selected Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast (1870) by Albert Bierstadt. The Clark Art Institute has selected West Point, Prout’s Neck (1900) by Winslow Homer. Each painting shows waves surging against the rocks with intricate scenic and lighting details.

Even though the location and subject of one painting is set on the East Coast and the other on the West Coast, both artists grew up in Massachusetts. Bierstadt, originally from the German kingdom of Prussia, was two years old when his family settled in New Bedford. Homer was a native of Boston.

Bierstadt was known for his detailed landscapes of the American West. He was part of the Hudson River School of artists whose paintings originally concentrated on romanticized scenes of the Hudson River Valley and later expanded to include additional locations. Homer painted rural scenes and became best known for his seascapes.

The U.S. Postal Service honored both of them with commemorative stamps. Homer was honored twice: once in 1962 with his painting, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), as the image on the stamp and in 2010 with his Boys in the Pasture as the featured image. Bierstadt was also honored twice: once in 1998 with his The Last of the Buffalo and in 2008 featuring his Valley of the Yosemite.

This is not the first year that art museums have bet on the outcome of the Super Bowl by offering a painting or artwork exchange. The Seattle Seahawks emerged the winner after 2014 bowl game against the Denver Broncos. As a result, the Denver Art Museum loaned the Frederick Remington sculpture, The Bronco Buster, to the Seattle Art Museum.

The first Super Bowl art exchange wager involving museums was made in 2010 between the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). NOMA won and received a painting from Indianapolis. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh loaned one of its paintings to the Milwaukee Art Museum after losing the bet in 2011.

Artwork exchange was not part of the bet in 2012 when the two teams were the New York Giants and New England Patriots. However, the mayors of Boston and New York, Thomas Menino and Michael Bloomberg, wagered a two-day package that included a visit to a leading art museum. New York won the game so four New Yorkers had a behind-the-scenes tour of the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum in Boston.

A result of art museums betting on the Super Bowl with painting, sculpture or tour exchanges is that they are attracting new visitors. Whether the Seattle Art Museum or The Clark Art Institute wins the bet, they are making an item in their collection available to a wider audience.