The art world breathed a sigh of relief as the 16 month-long bankruptcy trial for the city of Detroit drew to a close in November, ensuring that none of the treasures of the Detroit Institute of Arts will be sold to help pay the city’s debt.
“To have sold off that collection would have been so shortsighted,” Associate Professor of Art and Detroit native Barbara Bushey said. “Cutting off your nose to spite your face does not even begin to describe it.”
In October, when Detroit bankruptcy judge Steven Rhodes asked Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, “Why not monetize the art?,” Orr responded that selling the museum’s art would irreparably harm the DIA, according to the Detroit Free Press. Last Friday, the judge made his final decision on the case, approving Detroit’s “grand bargain,” which has saved the institute from a terrible fate. This plan includes a combination of philanthropic support, creditor deals, and city action.
The City of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in July 2013. Since then, creditors have been sharpening their knives and demanding payment for the city’s $18 billion debt. The city has been examining its assets. Because a huge part of the museum’s collections is owned by the city, creditors pressured the Institute to sell its treasures to pay off the debt.
Despite legal problems that selling the art would raise, the fact is that the DIA contains immense and historical beauty in a devastated city. Some things have to give to pay off debt, and the DIA is possibly the most valuable asset. For precisely this reason, the city was reluctant to sell the art.
If sold, the art could have gone anywhere, to private collections or other museums, who may have refused to purchase the art out of solidarity with the DIA.
In October, the city reached a settlement with one of its creditors, Financial Guaranty Insurance Company. The city agreed to hand over Joe Louis Arena, the home of the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, to FGIC to settle the bankruptcy case. A new arena will be built by 2017, when the Joe Louis Arena will be demolished and replaced with a hotel and condominiums. Belle Isle, which is a park island in the Detroit river, is another asset that the city potentially can cultivate to help pay off debt.
Hillsdale College professor of Art Sam Knecht said that the museum should not be subject to governmental misfortunes which are outside its control.
“A distinguished art museum ought not to be under the ownership of state or municipal government and thus subject to the misfortunes that might befall the governmental agency,” Knecht said via email.
Bunny Homan, a Michigan representative for the Portrait Society of America and a colleague of Knecht’s in the Detroit area has followed the case and is relieved by the results.
“Personally, I feel that we have saved the museum because the two biggest holdouts, first Syncora and then FGIC rewrote their contracts with the city and stopped pursuing the sale of the art work,” Homan said in an email. “On the other hand, I am not the Federal Judge. And there may be things he would like to fine-tune.”
John Miller, director of the Dow Journalism Program, has posters of the DIA’s Diego Rivera mural hanging in his office, and is a fan of the museum overall.
“It’s an asset worth potentially billions of dollars,” Miller said of the museum. “It is a tremendous institution, full of beautiful art, a treasure of the city, a treasure of the country, now threatened because of city mismanagement.”
Bushey said that the institute contains major world masterpieces, but the collection as a whole has kept growing upon itself, and it is important for the people of the city to have access to the whole.
Bushey also said that it is an important part of cultural heritage, and that art teaches what it means to be human.
And as the gray days come upon the city of Detroit, the DIA remains a source of beauty and color, which, Bushey says, proves the existence of God. She remembers visiting the museum often as a child, and treasures the beauty of the each piece there.
“They’re all such old friends,” she said.
