The art newspapers are full of the possible fate of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Will the so called ‘grand bargain’ that allows a few heavy hitters to stump up save the museum and its artwork, or will there be a selloff in an attempt to whittle down the city’s enormous debt? Based on a Christie’s valuation of a few months ago, with the collection valued in the $500 million range, the grand bargain seemed likely. Now, however, it appears creditors want the collection revalued, with some indication that the Christies figure is very low indeed, with the collection probably worth in the range of several billion dollars.
On the one hand, the disbursal of any great collection is freighted with powerful emotion, and none of them positive, except for those, in this instance, felt by the city’s creditors, but the fact is, collections come and go. Nearly all the period holdings of any institutional collection were at one time owned by someone else, and acquired when the fortunes of the acquisitor were waxing and those of the disbursing party were waning. One can be sentimental about the industrial gigantism that was Detroit through most of the 20th century, a byproduct of which was the purchasing of cultural trophies that bedizened the museum, but that time has come and gone, and the city is in eclipse. No- eclipse implies that its problems are short lived and its fortunes will, in the manner of an eclipse, inevitably recover. Does anyone believe that? I suppose we are all bit by the same nostalgia bug, with the belief that America’s postwar economic expansion will return with the same force and effect as felt by nearly everyone in this country in the 1950’s. As I look out my window, I don’t see a single man with a crew cut, white short sleeve shirt and dark narrow tie, or any women with Mamie Eisenhower bangs. By which I mean, of course, this country and the economic engine that powers it is as different now as the appearance and modes of endeavor of its population.
To think the Detroit Institute of Arts and its collections should be saved as a public institution is, in the abstract, laudable in the way that making culture accessible to the general run of the populace who might not otherwise have access to it is always laudable, but now the collection serves a purpose that might yield it of far greater and much more immediate importance than it held formerly. The Detroit Institute of Arts as a civic ornament has, as the city it adorned, seen its day come, and now that day has gone.