Most local art lovers know about Roanoke's connection to Thomas Eakins, the great 19th-century painter. Eakins' grand-niece, Roanoker Peggy Macdowell Thomas, gave her collection of Eakins paintings and memorabilia to the Art Museum of Western Virginia in 2001, which helped stoke the fires for a new museum (now under construction). But do they know that Eakins' most famous painting, "The Gross Clinic" -- a jarringly realistic painting of a surgeon lecturing students while performing an operation -- is for sale? The painting has been owned by the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia since the school bought it in 1878 for $200. The college announced this month it would sell the painting jointly to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, unless a Philadelphia museum can match their offer: $68 million.

-- Kevin Kittredge