On May 24 the news broke that Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, was considering whether the city could or should sell off the art collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts(DIA) to help pay back its debts. In the roughly week and a half since then, loud reactions have been heard from many corners of the art world, as well as writers in various media outlets and Michigan politicians themselves. The reactions pretty much range from “this is a bad idea” to “this is a terrible idea.”

For his part — and not surprisingly — DIA Director Graham Beal told the New York Times that he didn’t think the museum’s collection really could be sold, since it’s held in the public trust:

“As far as we’re concerned,” Mr. Beal said, “as objects held in the public trust, they actually don’t have a value. I know people find that odd.”

This, of course, was nicely counterbalanced in the article by a statement from Orr’s spokesperson, Bill Nowling, who said:

We have to look at everything on the table. As much as it would pain us to do it — and it does; I’m a great lover of art and so is Kevyn — we’ve got a responsibility to rationalize all the assets of the city and find out what the worth is and what the city holds.

In other words, it may require something more than rational argument to stop a potential sale. So Michigan Republican Senator Randy Richardville has introduced a bill that would attempt to do exactly that, according to USA Today.

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