Imagine if you saw a Lamborghini parked in the driveway of a glorious Art Deco mansion. What would you think? Maybe the owner is a gentleman recently retired, and the car was a 65th birthday present he gave to himself. Maybe there were less than a hundred of its kind ever made, and the car carries historical and sentimental value.
But the plaster is peeling off the walls of this glorious mansion. Its roof leaks, the pipes are rusted, and the windows can’t hold in the heat or keep out the cold. The gentleman can’t even keep up with utilities payments, pay for home security, or anything else. The man is bankrupt.
Detroit is that mansion, and Detroit’s art is that Lamborghini.
To say that Detroit has fallen on hard times, is a little worse for wear, or that the city is faces a few challenges would be a disservice both to the city and to its people. Subtlety has its place, but skirting around the graveness of Detroit’s situation isn’t going to help Detroit recover. Detroit is broke. Understanding how Detroit went broke, though important, is not the number one priority.
Detroit needs to tighten its belt and one of the first notches ought to be its art. If Detroit doesn’t want to sell its art, the city should at least rent it to some other city. I understand a city, or a country, wanting to set aside funds to preserve its cultural heritage, which the Detroit Institute of Arts undoubtedly is, but as of December 3, 2013, Detroit is $18 billion in the red. Detroit has no funds to set aside
If Detroit does not want to sell its art, it must at least rent the art out. The only question is to whom. My preference is Fargo, North Dakota, but there are many other potential buyers and renters.
In 2012, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported that Michigan’s economy grew by 2.2 percent, the national average being 2.8. Detroit cannot look to the East Coast for capable buyers or renters, the average growth rate of New England in 2012 having been less than 1 percent. It would be better to look to the West Coast, the lowest economic growth rate of those three sate (California’s) being 3.5 percent. Texas’s economic growth rate was 4.8 percent. North Dakota’s economic growth rate was more than California’s and Texas’s combined, a whopping 13.4 percent.
Perhaps Detroit’s art would find a better home, if only a temporary one, in the Plains Art Museum of Fargo. Once Detroit’s debts are paid, its roads maintained at least as well as the Michigan average, and running water and electricity again become taken for granted as they are in the rest of the country, Detroit may turn its attention to such luxuries as an art collection.
