There has been much discussion lately about the trend of museums selling off their art to balance the budget. But museums aren’t the only ones divesting themselves of great works: Alan Artner points out that private collectors do it all the time, and the effect on a city’s artistic reputation can be drastically changed by such actions. “In the past it was thought that artworks collected in a city should stay in the city, for in a sense, they belonged to it. People rich enough to have significant collections made their money in particular cities and leaving art to them was a way of giving something back.” But beginning in the 1980s, when art really became a financial investment as well as an aesthetic one, this view began to change.