By the way, folks may wonder about the astonishing numbers I cite for the value of Detroit's art collection and the capital income it could produce. Well, the Toledo Museum of Art's director Brian Kennedy calls the value of his museum's collection astonishing at 47:44 in this recording of his panel with the DIA's Graham Beal and the Cleveland Museum of Art's David Franklin, moderated by Judith Dobrzynski:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DFkmhNqRnM

Kennedy says [[you can follow along at 47:44 if you don't trust me): "…for example, insurance bills like we have, they reflect an asset base that's absolutely astonishing, so it raises the reasonable question, "So, what are you doing to account for your assets?"

It's not easy getting good market value estimates for museum collections. For example, the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver recently sold four Still paintings to create the operating endowment they couldn't raise otherwise. The four Stills went for $114 million at Sotheby's. The 825 Stills the museum still has [[not to mention 1500 works on paper, etc.)? Director Dean Sobel estimates the museum collection's value at roughly $1 billion, even as he claims a woman stumbling into a painting at a reception damaged one worth about $30 million. Either the average value of the collection's other paintings is down around $1 million, or Sobel is lowballing the market value of the collection, perhaps by a factor around 25.

The DIA says Detroit's art collection is worth "more than $1 billion." Lowball? One of the few museum art collections that has had many published estimates of its market value was that of the Barnes Foundation [[its contested move from suburban Merion to central Philadelphia prompted a lot of discussion). These estimates ranged from $5 billion to $50 billion for its 2500+ objects, with most citations falling around $25 billion or $30 billion. The DIA has 60,000+ objects. If their market value compares to those of the Barnes on average, the math says a range of $120 billion to $1.2 trillion, with most citations falling around $600 billion to $720 billion. That's a range from $200k per object to $2 million, with values like $1 million to $1.2 most cited, and the DIA saying their average object is worth more than $17k. True, Albert Barnes was a spectacular collector, but the DIA has had some good ones too. Maybe Graham Beal will tell us what insurance coverages the Founders Society carries for Detroit's art collection.

Even if the low end of the Barnes estimates per object is substantially above the DIA's true market value per object -- and estimates are notoriously poor predictors of auction performance -- there's plenty of room for Detroit's art collection to be worth many, many billions and its capital income to provide hundreds of millions of dollars per year in new revenues to Detroit. Hundreds of millions in annual revenue. Even coming from an outsider with a new unproven idea, the suggestion that Detroit ought to discuss how to manage these assets for the public's highest and best uses seems pretty reasonable. I'm pretty confident that my tools will give Detroit the best results, even if I don't belong to the all the right professional associations. At this point, if you ask those associations what Detroit ought to do to complement cultural benefits with financial benefits, they'll tell you to forget about financial benefits. Do you think Detroit should forget about getting financial benefits from the many, many billions of liquid assets that the City owns? No, I didn't think so. And the beauty of Coaccession is you get the financial benefits without giving up the cultural benefits... your Monet, and money too!

Wherever you are, Rosa, you ought to take great satisfaction about asking the question about bankruptcy and the DIA. It turns out there's a very important, and very under-appreciated, connection.