Super Bowl? How about a Museum Bowl? Boston V. Atlanta

It was a social media smackdown between Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Atlanta's High Museum Friday. The two teams went at it with a vengeance on Twitter, boosting their respective ball clubs and talking trash, but with a veneer of cultural refinement.

These competitors don’t hit as hard as Sean Weatherspoon or Devonta Freeman, but their knowledge of landscape painters and abstract expressionists can be devastating.

At the kickoff Boston Tweeted “Get ready for some art inspired trash talk,” and included the image of a painting by 19th Century French master Henri Degnault, whose portrait of a Greek charioteer received the addition of some face-paint and a foam rubber “We’re Number One!” finger. Did Degnault need photoshopping? Were the Greeks Patriot’s fans? We don’t think so.

Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts dressed up this ancient Greek in Patriots face paint as part of the #MuseumBowl social media smackdown between the High Museum and its Boston counterpart.

The High countered with a scary 16th Century Venetian engraving showing a procession of witches and such riding animal skeletons, declaring Atlanta is “coming in for the kill!” Unnerving.

Boston followed up with a self-portrait of Rembrandt wearing four Super Bowl rings and declaring “Good thing I have another hand … I’ll need it after this Super Bowl is over.”

Boston’s cultural wags added to the trash talk by putting four Super Bowl rings on this self-portrait by Rembrandt.

But Atlanta had a response: