Detroit's Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr addressed media at a press conference with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, after Thursday's decision that the City of Detroit would pursue bankruptcy Friday, July 19. (Tanya Moutzalias | MLive.com)We "reject the claim that workers in Detroit must choose between their pensions and access to culture," a statement from the Socialist Equality Party says. "The aim of the demonstration is to mobilize working people and youth throughout the city to defend the DIA and access to culture as a part of the defense of all the rights of the working class."
As recently as Thursday, Gov. Rick Snyder-appointed Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr told the Detroit Economic Club the potential sale of DIA artworks remains a possibility.
“I said at the beginning… look everything’s on the table,” Orr said of the possibility of some of the museum’s assets being sold to appease creditors.
Orr said that Christie's auction house will finish an appraisal of “tier one” art by the end of this month, and another of “tier two” pieces by the end of November.
“I have a fiduciary obligation to account for all the assets of the city of Detroit,” he said. “The foremost amongst them might very well be the DIA.”
Ironically, Orr also told the club at a luncheon Thursday that the reason he decided to attend the University of Michigan, where he first met Snyder, because he was "somewhat of a socialist" as a youngster and looking for a large, public university to begin an odyssey in which he would "stick it to 'the man.'"
He told the attendees that the irony is that he is now "the man."
The value of the DIA art assets is projected by some to be as high as $1 billion.
Pam Marcil, a spokeswoman for the DIA, says Christie's Appraisals is currently evaluating about 3,300 works of art, those purchased using city funds, which is about 5 percent of the 66,000-work collection.
About 350 of that portion is currently on display and the remainder in storage.