The folks over at CityLab, an online publication that
focuses on urban issues, have come up with an interesting comparison between
financially crumbling Greece and formerly bankrupt Detroit.
Like the Motor City, the Greeks are now facing the
prospect of putting on the auction block some of their most precious cultural
assets in order to keep the country financially afloat.
Over the weekend, Greece agreed
to demands from Germany and other European leaders designed to keep the country
in the Eurozone. Part of that pact includes Greece sequestering $55 billion in
assets to be sold or privatized for the purpose of repaying its creditors and
recapitalizing its banks.
“Back in 2013, Kevyn Orr, the bankruptcy lawyer appointed
as Detroit’s emergency manager, announced plans to assess for sale the
collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the largest and most
significant art collections in the country. The scheme would have seen major
parts of the (DIA)ollection, those that belonged to the City of Detroit, sold
or auctioned to repay the city’s debts.
bargain” that resolved Detroit’s bankruptcy and saved the city’s art
collection. In the end, the value of the collection as a whole prevailed over
the sum of its parts; the museum, a number of private foundations and donors,
and the state raised more than $800 million to secure the city’s outstanding
pension debts and keep the collection in Detroit forever—or until the next
time.
never materialized, the city might
still be mired in bankruptcy proceedings today. Still, an outcome that
preserved the museum collection was never certain. Creditors argued against it.
Some of them said that they had found buyers willing to pay $2
billion for all of the (DIA) art owned by the city, far more than the $800
million estimate procured by the city.”
