Time to Sell the Family Jewels, Detroit

THE DAILY BEAST
By Nick Gillespie

Photo by Joshua Lott/Reuters

MICHIGAN---Saddled with billions in debt, there's no good reason the city shouldn't sell its art collection worth as much as $866 million. If you really want to make jaws drop in polite conversation, don’t waste your time suggesting that bankrupt Detroit merely stiff its pensioners and creditors harder than John Holmes did his costars in 1976’s Tell Them Johnny Wadd Is Here. Instead, suggest that the city unload its little-seen yet high-valued art collection hiding in plain sight at The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). As urban theorist Joel Kotkin has put it, “We get it wrong. We think the cultural amenities drives the prosperity [in cities], when it’s really the prosperity that drives the cultural amenities.” [link]