Christie's And Detroit

Now we enter a situation in which our undemocratic state has decided to hire Christie's of London
to appraise the pieces and collections at the Detroit Institute of Arts for sale.
That strikes me as a bit rich. No pun intended.
The Institute has long been too precious for Detroiters as far as its directors are concerned.
Of late, advertising tried hard to encourage Detroiters to visit; but people who have a hard time ever
getting regular art or music classes at school, or bus transportation to the cultural center, don't
sacrifice time and money to get to a place they barely understand save the bells and whistles recently
trotted out with them in mind. We can't exactly blame the schools. Detroiters have never voted to
turn down a millage, not even for the libraries.
When we citizens should have been welcome at the museum, tricky privacies were afoot everywhere.
Nearly all the square footage in the place was off limits to most of the public most of the time.
Whenever the museum had to let people in, we got to see a very limited number of art collections, and even then we rarely saw any of the paintings by  brilliant contemporary black oil painting artists we have in this country. Yes, we saw a great deal of Omare Bearden and some quilts.
My mom would always say, 'Phooey! Western civilization looted the world, and now charges ordinary people who may have come from the looted countries in the first place to take a look at their own works. I won't give them a dime.'  Well, 'phooey' was my dad's word. My mother actually used
a more colorful word.
My own views were mellowed from hers because I had to invest in my babies getting exposed.
My parents paid for my piano lessons for ten years without a break. I still don't know how they did it.
What a commitment...rain, sleet, snow, buying pianos. But that's another story.
As a single mom, I didn't have a great deal of luck getting art or music into my house on anything like a regular basis. I was working two, three, four, once five different jobs per week to hang on to the mortgage. I think, as a matter of fact, my children went for months or even a year or two without having any more than a radio.
When I taught for a while at a city university (I had time to edit then.) I occasionally got a glimpse of
offerings at the  Detroit museum. If any of the programs were a little bit affordable, I'd bite.
Sometimes, I'd even get one of the children into a program.
Other times, I was stonewalled.
The museum does have some wonderful permanent collections, and at least one wonderful library.
I've heard about  them. I've seen precious little of any of it.
Once I insisted on a meeting with one of the museum officials to discuss my having an opportunity to see one of the book collections. I had some room to insist because I knew the official as one of my
colleagues at the U.
Still, he came down a long flight of stairs to meet me, cracked the door open, a tiny bit, but then told
me he didn't have the authority to let me come upstairs, but would speak to
someone about it when he could.
Fast forward more than twenty years. I still haven't seen any of the books, or even the offices.
At this moment, I'm wondering what I will miss about this museum.
I will miss the museum theater in a way. I went there often, but most of those movies were foreign
language film, so I didn't go there for a hometown crowd.
The museum had a lot of jobs, a lot of curators- most of them available only to non-Detroiters.
The things I am more interested in are now in the African American museum recently built next door to the Institute.
Still, Christies?
Well the suburbs were the people most interested in this museum.
I don't think, though,  that they will get a bang for their buck from the conservative Christie's.
Maybe they will get a dime for each of the dollars they feel is their own.
If they get 18 billion, will they fork it over to our city?
Smile...