Overview
- Embeds a comprehensive institutional history within an account of the life of a city
- Charts the dramatic rescue of the museum's collections during Detroit's bankruptcy
- Appeals to a highly interdisciplinary audience
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in American Economic History (AEH)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Abt describes how the Detroit Institute of Arts became the fifth largest art museum in America, from its founding as a private non-profit corporation in 1885 to its transformation into a municipal department in 1919, through the subsequent decades of extraordinary collections and facilities growth coupled with the repeated setbacks of government funding cuts during economic downturns. Detroit's 2013 bankruptcy underscored the nearly 130 years of fiscal missteps and false assumptions that rendered the museum particularly vulnerable to the monetary power of a global art investment community eager to capitalize on the city's failures and its creditors' demands.
This is a remarkable and important contribution to many fields, including non-profit management and economics, cultural policy, museum and urban history, and the histories of both the Detroit Institute of Arts and the city of Detroit itself. Despite the museum's unique history, its story offers valuable lessons for anyone concerned about the future of art museums in the United States and abroad.
Reviews
“Jeffrey Abt gives a gripping account of the battle that raged around the celebrated holdings of the Detroit Institute of Arts after the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013. In the museum were hugely valuable works by Van Gogh, Picasso and Breughel, as well as tens of thousands of other works. Abt recounts how demands for the art to be sold were fought off and how a “grand bargain” was thrashed out, saving the collections for the city and forfuture generations.” (Georgina Adam, Art market journalist for The Art Newspaper and The Financial Times)
“An outstanding work of scholarship and analysis. Jeffrey Abt is the foremost expert on the history of the Detroit Institute of Arts.” (Bruce J. Altshuler, New York University, USA)
“Jeffrey Abt’s strangely gripping story of one museum’s, and one city’s, financial struggles is brilliantly told. Why this richly detailed case matters not only for what is now called the Detroit Institute of Arts becomes abundantly clear in his deft account. For the struggle is also over the nature of civic property, the implications of public versus private ownership, how art should be displayed, to whom it belongs, how it is valued. As he shows, these are all entangled together in ways often unnoticed by observers. For this reason, this is a story that those all those interested in the politics of museums, art and the cultural life of cities should be sure to read.” (Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Valuing Detroit’s Art Museum
Book Subtitle: A History of Fiscal Abandonment and Rescue
Authors: Jeffrey Abt
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in American Economic History
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45219-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Economics and Finance, Economics and Finance (R0)
Copyright Information: Jeffrey Abt 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-45218-0Published: 05 April 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-83242-5Published: 21 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-45219-7Published: 27 March 2017
Series ISSN: 2662-3900
Series E-ISSN: 2662-3919
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVII, 273
Number of Illustrations: 43 b/w illustrations, 12 illustrations in colour
Topics: Cultural Economics, Urban Economics, Non-Profit Organizations and Public Enterprises, Public Administration, Economic History