Weekend Economists Take a Chance and Call a Bluff July 26-28, 2013

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20. WHAT SHOULD DETROIT DO WITH ITS ART?: THE SEQUEL

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/07/what-should-detroit-do-with-its-art-the-sequel.html



I take back my endorsement, in an earlier post, of the idea that the city of Detroit should ease its financial crisis by selling art works from the collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. I also apologize to the many whom my words pained.

I wrote in reaction to this quote in the Times, from a spokesman for the state-appointed emergency manager Kevyn D. Orr: “It’s hard to go to a pensioner on a fixed income and say, ‘We’re going to cut 20 percent of your income or 30 percent or whatever the number is, but art is eternal.’ ”

I retract my hasty opinion for two specific reasons, and because I have a sounder grasp of the issues involved.

First, the facts: I am now persuaded that a sale of the D.I.A.’s art, besides making merely a dent in Detroit’s debt, could not conceivably bring dollar-for-dollar relief to the city’s pensioners. Further, the value of the works would stagger even today’s inflated market. Certainly, no museum could afford them. They would pass into private hands at relatively fire-sale prices.