In an unprecedented move, the final tally of Christie’s Detroit Institute of Arts appraisal later this fall will offer a rare look into the true market value of a major museum’s art collection. Expected to reach into the billions, the valuation of the museum’s collection will add a new sense of urgency to the current budgetary crisis in Detroit, and its effects on DIA. “This is like the weighing of souls,” says Maxwell Anderson, director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “This is biblical stuff, not the approximations that insurance companies look for. It’s extremely problematic for all museums, because it alters the public’s perception of artworks from being ciphers of public heritage of transcendent value, to objects for sale to pay other people’s debts.”
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