'I remember when all this was trees': Banksy mural sells , by dreadnatty on Oct 1, 2015 19:07:51 GMT 1, 'I remember when all this was trees': Banksy mural sells for $137,500
www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/10/01/banksy-mural-detroit-michigan-auction/73135144/

Going once. Going twice. Sold. The Banksy has left Detroit for good.

The city's most famous and controversial piece of street art, painted in 2010 amid the ruins of the Packard Plant by the anonymous British celebrity artist known as Banksy, sold Wednesday at Julien's Auctions in Beverly Hills, Calif., for $137,500 including the buyer's premium. The price was well below the auction house's pre-sale estimate of $200,000 to $400,000

Still, that means 555 Gallery, the Detroit nonprofit gallery whose artists excavated the 8-foot, 1,500-pound mural from the abandoned Packard Plant in 2010 will pocket $110,000, which was the winning bid, or hammer price.

"I did everything I could not to set any expectations," said Carl Goines, Gallery 555's executive director, speaking from Beverly Hills shortly after the auction. "What we have now is so much more than we've ever had in the past."

Done in Banksy's familiar stencil style and ornamented with hand-painted lettering, the mural was done on a cinder block wall and shows a forlorn African-American boy with a can of red paint and a brush alongside the words, "I remember when all this was trees."

Wednesday's sale brings down the curtain on a five-year drama with more plot twists than an Agatha Christie mystery. It began when the mural was discovered amidst the Packard ruins by urban explorers. Pictures of the mural showed up on Banksy's website, considered by experts to be definitive proof of its authenticity.

The 555 artists removed the mural from the plant in order to save it from eminent destruction by a bulldozer doing clearing work at the site. Critics called the artists thieves and charged that removing a piece of street art was tantamount to destroying it. The gallery and its supporters pledged not to sell the work and put it on display at the gallery, then located in southwest Detroit. Meanwhile, a company aligned with the owner of the Packard Plant, seeking to cash in on the potential value of the mural, sued over ownership rights. But the gallery prevailed, eventually paying $2,500 for clear title.

All stayed quiet for a few years, until 2014, when the gallery announced the work was for sale, raising the ire of old foes and also losing the goodwill of some who had been initially mollified by the decision to keep the mural on view in Detroit. Ill will remains within certain segments of the arts community, and soe critics said the gallery will have to work to regain trust.

"When they took it there was a certain backlash, but lot of people gave them benefit of the doubt when they displayed it," said Matthew Naimi, founder of Recycle Here!, a Detroit-based recycling center, and its adjacent outdoor Lincoln Street Art Park and Sculpture Garden. "They gained the public trust but then violated that by putting the Banksy up for sale."

As a champion of street art, Naimi said he was also concerned with the precedent set by tonight's big-money payout for the gallery. "The example they set with street art is that if if a building in abandoned or if title to a work is unclear, you can just steal it and sell it for a profit."

For his part, Goines said he remained comfortable with the gallery's decisions and said he and his colleagues were looking forward to moving forward.

"For us to take a piece of art from Detroit to Los Angeles with such a strange history and such a roller-coaster of criticism, and for it to allow us to provide for more artists and do more work in the community than we ever could before is amazing," he said. "It's also surreal."