Sunday Dialogue - Sell Masterpieces to Help Save a City? - NYTimes.com Readers discuss the value of art museums as Detroit weighs how to solve its financial crisis. How many lives is a Rembrandt worth? If we follow this line of thought and take a running start down its slippery slope in history, we would quickly arrive in the 2009 boardroom at Brandeis University, where choices seemed nonexistent and the art collection necessarily fungible. Thousands of employees would lose their jobs if the university closed under the weight of its sudden financial losses. Unsurprisingly, other options besides selling art emerged. Taken to global dimensions, why don't we insist that Greece sell its art and architecture to pay its bills and feed its people? How many lives is the Acropolis worth? Detroit's financial condition isn't the result of sudden factors. Like other municipalities, the city has been living off disastrous short-term thinking and an absence of long-term investment. However, more short-term thinking will only perpetuate disaster. Sell Detroit's gems, and they are gone forever. Let's commission economists to determine the long-term value of keeping the collection in Detroit compared with the one-time limited dollar value of its sale. Perhaps a recent property tax that provides $23 million annually for the D.I.A. should be reduced commensurate with other cutbacks imposed across the city. Certainly, the D.I.A. should make some sacrifices along with the rest of the city dying around it. NATALIE MARSH Director Gund Gallery at Kenyon College Gambier, Ohio, Aug. 7, 2013 How many lives has a Rembrandt saved? Growing up in Detroit in the 1950s, the daughter of a factory worker, I didn't have books, paintings and music around the home. In high school my art teacher, Irving Berg, signed me up for a sculpture class at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I had never been there. When the bus stopped in front of the museum, I got out (heart racing), walked toward a huge statue (Rodin's "The Thinker"), ascended the wide marble stairs, opened the doors and walked in. I was changed. A transformative moment like this cannot be unique to me. As a kid from the East Side of Detroit, I was able to wander the galleries of my art museum. What a gift. Today I am an artist. MARIE TAPERT Whitmore Lake, Mich., Aug. 7, 2013