The Post’s uber arts crtic, Blake Gopnik, has sparked the passions of the D.C. arts community once again (and not because of an article about the National Gallery’s gelato offerings). Gopnik, lamenting that some of the city’s best art is held behind closed doors in private collections, is calling for a collectors’ coalition that would show off its best holdings in a local setting.

What does Gopnik (who is pictured below when he was arts critic at the Globe and Mail) have in mind?

Here’s how it would work: A consortium of the city’s best collectors of contemporary art would come together to make their art available for exhibition. They would find a modest, white-cube space and invite independent curators to fill it with selections from their holdings.

The project would be a win-win all around.

Tyler Green’s Modern Arts blog shuns Gopnik’s idea, saying that would demonstrate that D.C. is an arts “regional backwater”:

Gopnik’s idea treats DC like its collections exist on an island, apart from the “rest” of the art world. Why would the capital of the free world want to peg itself as a regional backwater (when it comes to art) by investing time, energy, and funding in such a middling concept?