Last week, Democracy Tree reported that Ed Kurtz, Flint’s Emergency Manager, auctioned-off city assets that included a beloved Santa and reindeer team which had been donated by the wife of a former mayor for display atop Flint City Hall.

Now it seems the newly appointed Emergency Manager of Detroit, Kevyn Orr, has taken a clue from the heartless Flint Santa sale, and is considering whether the art held in trust by the Detroit Institute of Arts is a city-owned asset that he, or the courts, could choose to liquidate, particularly if the city opts for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Annmarie Erickson, Executive Vice President of the Institute told the Detroit Free Press “We are standing by our contention and belief that we hold the collection in trust for the public. And although to some it may seem to be an asset, we do not.” However, Bill Nowling, spokesperson for Orr, believes that the art may indeed be a city-owned asset, and cautioning that they currently have no intention of liquidating the collection, went on to assert it may be within their authority to do so. He was quoted saying “We have to look at everything on the table. As much as it would pain us to do it, and it does, I’m a great lover of art and so is Kevyn, we’ve got a responsibility to rationalize all the assets of the city and find out what the worth is and what the city holds.”

That statement does not bode well for the DIA. Democracy Tree has written previously about conservativism and negative attitudes toward culture and the arts in general, finding conservatives often harbor a contempt for things in the art-world they don’t understand.

Detroit would bounce-back from a financial bankruptcy, but it may never recover from a cultural bankruptcy.

Amy Kerr Hardin