Bank of America says it won’t sell the famed photography collection it inherited when it acquired LaSalle Bank.

The multi-million dollar LaSalle Bank collection consists of nearly 5,000 photographs by artists like Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen. But Bank of America won’t part with a single frame. Arts and Culture Executive Rena DeSisto says Bank of America has kept other art collections acquired through mergers and will do the same with LaSalle’s. She says the vast size of the collection would have made it hard to sell.

DeSISTO: Some companies I know in the past have basically sold their collections outright, and they almost always take a loss because you’re essentially creating almost a fire sale mentality where your dumping a lot of product on the market all at once.

DeSisto says the company wants to make the pieces more accessible to the public. She says Bank of America is in talks with several institutions in the Chicago area about exhibiting parts of the collection.