Detroit Institute of Art – the metabunker https://metabunker.dk by matthias wivel & friends Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:09:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.4 Stop the Motor City Sellout https://metabunker.dk/2013/08/25/stop-the-motor-city-sellout/ Sun, 25 Aug 2013 21:09:43 +0000 http://metabunker.dk/?p=5812
As most of you are no doubt aware, Detroit is bankrupt, and one of the worse ideas the city has for keeping its creditors at bay is selling off the treasures in the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of America’s finest art museums. Deaccessioning masterworks from the collection, or dissolving it entirely, would be a great loss to the public, and to the city: no longer the industrial hub of yesteryear, Detroit needs to redefine itself in order to remain a vibrant city and and an attractive place to live and visit. Focusing on culture and other soft capital doesn’t appear like the worst way to achieve this, and in the DIA the city has an internationally significant cultural institution and a natural node of interest in such an endeavour, it seems to me. Besides, whatever money might be raised from selling off the collection is dwarfed by the city’s debt. It would be like pissing your pants to stay warm.

Anyway, enough pontification. Jeffrey Hamburger from Harvard University has organised an online petition to convince the city of Detroit to leave the DIA alone. I encourage you to sign it, and leave any comments you may have.

(Such petitions can make a difference, however small. Hamburger’s petition to convince the city of Berlin to leave its collection of old masters at the Tiergarten Gemäldegalerie may not have been the deciding factor, but it cannot have had an adverse effect on the recent, happy decision not to move the collection).

Image: The Wedding Dance by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1566), one of the great works in the DIA.

]]>