The DIA Issues Statement after City of Detroit Files for Chapter 9 Bankruptcy

Business as usual.

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If you haven't heard, Detroit’s broke as a joke. The city filed Chapter 9 bankruptcy after a long, unsuccessful fight to avoid any drastic measures. It was the biggest municipal bankruptcy on record. The city had been in a heated fight with the Detroit Institute of Arts, with emergency manager Kevyn Orr eyeing the museum's massive art collection as a possible source of income.

To clarify the situation, the museum isn't like most institutions in the way that it doesn't receive public funding but it also doesn't own its property. According to Wall Street Journal, neither the city of Detroit or the state of Michigan contribute to its operations. However, the DIA's collection and building are mostly owned by Detroit's city government under an agreement. This gray area is why this dispute is so tense.

Following the announcement of Detroit's bankruptcy, the DIA issued a statement:

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So basically the museum is going to continue to serve until something happens otherwise. Should the city move to liquidate the museum's collection, it would be messy and unprecedented. It has never been done in such a large scale.

[viaCBSNews]

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