DETROIT, May 15 (UPI) -- A controversy has raged in Detroit over what to do about a graffiti mural left on a decaying plant wall by famed British-born graffiti artist Banksy.
During a recent visit to the Motor City, the artist known as Banksy, an international art world celebrity, secretly stenciled a painting of a boy holding a can of red paint on the wall of the crumbling 3.5-million-square-foot Packard plant. The caption on the work read: "I remember when all this was trees."
A group from the 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios, moved the 7-foot-by-5-foot section of cinder block wall with a forklift and placed it in a wooden frame near the base of the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Now, a debate has erupted over whether anyone had the right to relocate the Banksy piece and whether it should be protected in the future. Some Banksy works have sold for thousands of dollars.
"What does it mean to move a wall?" asked Luis Croquer, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. "And beyond legality, who does the wall really belong to, and now does the art belong to the gallery? To everybody? To nobody? We're operating in this space where there's this lawlessness that opens up possibilities that would be harder to encounter in other cities."
