Selling out the DIA

As talks in Detroit continue about a possible bankruptcy, there's been speculation that the Detroit Institute of Art's collection may need to be sold. 

Last month, Detroit's emergency financial manager notified the DIA that its art is a municipal asset and might be sold to satisfy creditors. The art world is watching to see what happens next.

"This is unprecedented," says Timothy Rub, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors and head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. "I can't believe anyone is thinking about liquidating this public treasure." The AAMD has strict guidelines that prohibit museums from selling art except for the purpose of acquiring more art.

Detroit's art museum is one of America's finest, praised for both particular works and encyclopedic range. In addition to Rivera's murals, it displays masterworks by Agnolo Bronzino, Pieter Bruegel and Henri Matisse. A self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh hangs in its galleries. So does Henry Fuseli's "The Nightmare," a weird and well-known image from the Romantic movement that foreshadows Surrealism and other 20th-century tendencies. The DIA's collections of American and African art are of a similarly high caliber.

Yet the museum owns almost none of it. Under a longstanding arrangement, the DIA's collection and its 600,000-square-foot Beaux Arts building belong to Detroit's city government.

I'm not sure if the state could step in and buy it, or if that could even be an option. But all bets are off right now.  And as much as we'd cringe to see that Diego Rivera mural disassembled, there may be little option.