Detroit, America's first post-apocalyptic city, has apparently managed to keep its municipally-owned art museum functioning, like the citadel of the missileheads in Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
While the streets outside are populated by extras from the cast of Beyond Thunderdome, running about with colanders strapped to their faces, crapping on the sidewalks and nesting in the shuttered auto factories, the Priests of Art have discovered a relic inside: The guidon from the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Deciding that they have no use for it, they have chosen to sell it at Sotheby's, where it's predicted to fetch between two and five million bucks.
What will they do with this windfall? Hire policemen? Repair the sewers? Fill potholes? Deport Eminem?
No! The "money from its sale could be put to better use buying something of true aesthetic value."
Brilliant! Let's go shopping, Nero!
I know that whenever I'm standing dead broke in the middle of the smoldering wreckage of a once-great civilization and someone hands me a seven-figure check, my first impulse is usually to go buy some modern art.
I'm sure there's some pesky city ordinance saying that the money has to stay in the museum or something, but when you've got water lapping at the gunwales, Cap'n Motown, it's time to rethink your priorities. I'm just sayin', is all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
27 comments:
There is something ..... just appropriate.... about the Seventh Cav guidon being there, surounded by savage hordes, that given the chance, will massacre everyone inside....
Actually, having been there several times for work, I can tell you that "Downtown" detroit is very nice, and the restaurants, casinos, and convention center are all enjoyable. And you can ccw.
now: My hotel suite looked out on a relatively gentrified looking loft building; during my stay, I witnessed a man tuning up his girlfriend in one of the units. When I called the cops they took the details until I told them the building. They paused.
"oh."
"Oh what?"
"We usually don't bother with calls from THAT building"
"I'm not calling from that building! I just witnessed a man slapping a woman around!"
"We'll look into it."
By the end of the week, nobody had looked into anything.
never get off the goddamned boat, apparently.
I'm sure we can find some big named Post Modernist artist to buy that flag, decorate it with fecal matter, and sell it back to the museum at twice what they paid for it.
Detroit is my hometown; I was born and raised there. East side.
Detroit...I don't even know how to describe Detroit. But the most accurate news stories are the most pejorative ones. It's just become very strange there.
When I was retiring from the Army, I never, ever, ever, ever, once, for a pico-second, even considered entertaining the thought of possibly looking into moving back to Detroit.
As noted, they tell me that Downtown is quite gentrified. So what?
Ehhhh, screw em. If you want to fall into the lake, I say "more power to you."
The idea that Custer's 7th Cav guidon is not of aesthetic value is chasing around inside my head and won't stop.
Philistines.
"I'd buy that for a dollar!"
Oh, c'mon, that's quality Old Detroit humor!
The sad thing is that the $2 million won't even come close to repaying what recent Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick cost the city by by unjustly firing cops and losing the resulting lawsuit.
Oh, and don't forget to money lost to general corruption in city government, although that amount will never be known.
Rob/Trebor
don't forget to money lost to general corruption in city government, although that amount will never be known.
Well, first we'd need to know how many decades back you want to go...
It makes me think of Long Kiss Goodnight:
Charlie: Easy, sport. I got myself outta Beirut once, I think I can get outta New Jersey.
Mitch: Yeah? Well, don't be so sure. Others have tried and failed. The entire population, in fact.
If the Detroit city govt could burn up funds found from selling the museums artwork, the museum building itself would now be empty of everything but graffiti and rats, and the city would be in no better position. Giving politicians access to money never seems to be a good idea (shooting for understatement of teh year award).
First, they claim that the reason the flag can be sold is that it is not art, and then claim that the law forces them to use the proceeds from selling art to buy more art.
Well, since it isn't art, there is no restriction, right? $3 million would let them buy the entire city at the current prices for land in Detroit.
When God gives you lemons...
So we get Kurt Russell to film an entire series of post-apocolyptic films there, and I move in with a wrecking ball and become a billionaire. Do you have any idea what repointed antique brick is worth here in New England?
I'm sure they're paying somebody to truck the broken brick away to a landfill, which is an obscene wast of all that Irish Confetti. The broken brick and masonry goes into filling up the holes, we put graSS over it, and call it the Detroit Memorial Park.
Until the brick ran out, I could make jobs for several hundred men, if there are any left still alive and willing to work.
Or is it like that small town in Maine, where the population has remained constant for a hundred years? Every time a baby is born, somebody leaves town.
One reason there's STILL a DIA, is that it isn't run by the city, and its maintains it's own foundation.
I thinnk that fact that it has taken this long for it to have to auction off items speaks to how well the DIA is managed compare to the municipal gov't. As opposed to the county gov'ts, that that are pretty decent. I think the Election of Dave Bing to Mayor and all the efforts the State Gov't put in to rooting out corruption are paying off. Remember Kwame was elected. TWICE. I was working there for is second electoral win, and no one I knew wanted him to win, or was sadly surprised by it.
The Downtown is looking up. The crime sprees that were to be the result of casninos never materialized, and people are heading back there to shop and entertain themselves. And that's the results of efforts of people like the Ilitch family, who've invested there. Motown still has some really bad neighborhoods and urban blight, but it's just noticed more, because Detroit is an easy city to pick on. Any major midwestern industrial city has them, it's just that Dems like to use Detroit a "See, this is what industry does!" cause du jour.
The aesthetic value of not living in fear and squalor is greatly underrated by those who don't have to.
Jim,
"The Downtown is looking up."
When you're face-down on the pavement, that's the only place you can look.
Hey they didn't get there by being SMART...why would you expect them to start now?
And +1 to Hypnagogue: I encorage such tomfoolery, as the sooner they burn Detroit to the water-line the sooner Omni Consumer Products (Haliburton) will build the Robocop and Ed-209!
Oh, three observations:
1. This IS corruption. Follow along with me here.
The DIA could hold its own auction if it wanted to, every serious bidder would attend. Custer memorabilia fans are legendarily tenacious, and this sale is NEWS.
BUT, Sotheby's will charge a 20% commission to the DIA. It will also charge the buyer a 20% buyer's premium.
Thus, if the hammer price is $1,000,000, the buyer pays $1,200,000, the DIA gets $800,000, and Sotheby's gets $400,000.
So if it goes fot $5,000,000, the DIA transfers TWO MILLION DOLLARS from its assets to Sotheby's.
I'm sure the Sotheby's board won't appreciate that at all.
And even if they did, there is no possible way that they can express that gratitude to the board of the DIA, other than a hearty handshake and cheerful smile.
2. The Smithsonian will probably end up buying it. So really, it's millions from the federal taxpayer to Sotheby's, courtesy of the DIA board. So everybody wins!
3. The flag is arguably still U. S. property. The Army should sue for it. (There may be an adverse possession or abandonment question, I don't know the law in this area.
I'll bet that if this flag came out of MY attic, there would be a Writ in my hand in ten minutes.
Why are they selling ANYTHING? Is it not the law that 3% of the TARP money MUST go to "Artistic" purposes? There can only be one answer: OBAMA HATES CAVALRY!
My first job out of college was at the Chevy Test Lab in Warren. 1962. Detroit was a pretty neat place, then. Sad to see such a decline...
Art
3. The flag is arguably still U. S. property. The Army should sue for it. (There may be an adverse possession or abandonment question, I don't know the law in this area.
That was my thought as well.
All those .mil aircraft you see on display at museums, airports and such? Majority are still property of the service involved and are on loan to the institution.
Wonder if something similar might apply here.
The referenced link provides graphic proof of what 50 years of Democratic and union control will do to a city.
And the Kendonesian Marxist Muslim Anti-American Usurper wants to do to the rest of our beloved country...
A older book about another part of the world could be re-written to illustrate what the Magical Marxist Messiah and his minions are doing to us--with the tacit help of about a third of the country: "Cry, The Beloved Country".
cap'n chumbucket
"Modern Art" is so..60's - they're already inhabiting a Post-Modernist Installation. Or has it been torn down already? In that case it's a Post-Post-Modernist Deconstruction - As a leading American theorist of Teh Postmodern with a Neo-Marxist orientation describes Postmodernism - it's the "dominant cultural logic of late capitalism." WTF.
I hate artists.
But Dirtcrashr, you ARE an artist...
This story is a bar exam question.
Most of those airplanes etc. were handed over by the Army.
This flag was never given or lent to anyone. If its provenance is accurate, it was stolen from the Army by one of its soldiers, who removed it from the body of a LBH casualty while on burial duty. He then transferred it to another person, and possession passed by descent to his widow, who sold it to the DIA's predecessor in interest.
At common law, it's been stolen property since 1876 and still belongs to the U. S. Army.
But other things may have happened, or there may be statutory or case law changes to its status. For example, the Army gave permission to the DIA to have it, back then or recently. The widow may have offered it to the army, and had no response or been told "we don't care.", highly unlikely back then. Or the possession by the DIA was so open and notorious that the Government's acceptance thereof constitutes an abandonment. Or there's some adverse possession statute that applies.
In any case, the Government should be trying to get it back.
And of course, it might be like lots of relics- a ragged flag, some cow blood, and a good story.
Be interesting to try to DNA the blood, if it's human.
Keep the flag, shell the shitty.
I mean, sell the city.
On second thought...
AT
What Jim said, Tam.
The DIA isn't run by the City. It's not the City's money to divvy up, you see, which is why the Art Museum is going to use its money to do what it wants, which is buy art.
I suppose there are so many city/state-run art museums that it's natural to assume the State has its filthy hands in it and is wasting tax money on modern art displays, but it doesn't appear to be so in this case.
(And if the Army wants the flag back? They can bid like anyone else. Teach you to lose it in the first place, 7th Cav!
"Finders keepers" is bad law in almost all cases, but for "century-old battlefield salvage" it actually seems to match traditional use pretty well.)
Contra staghounds, I don't see any corruption here in the sale, either. To liquidate a holding, you have to sell it.
How else can one honestly find the value of such an object other than an auction?
And who'll auction it without serious fees? (Which also pay for things like security - ever heard of Sotheby's getting robbed? No? Bet keeping that so is expensive as hell.)
Giving the Smithsonian a sweetheart deal would arguably be more "corrupt" from the perspective of the DIA's board and donors.
If the problem is that taxpayer money is buying it, then the problem is taxpayer-funded museums in the first place.
Post a Comment