The fate of the artworks held by the Detroit Institute of the Arts took another turn Wednesday, when a preliminary estimation of their value was submitted to city officials—at a far lower figure than initially cited.
The artworks were given a value of between $450 and $870 million by Christie’s auction house, falling well short of expectations. When creditors pushed a court motion last week to speed up the evaluation of the DIA works, expectations were for at least a billion-dollar figure.
There are 66,000 artworks in the collection, and Chritsie’s is evaluating the nearly 3,000 purchased outright by the city. Just 11 works appraised by the auction house make up 75 percent of the value, according to The Huffington Post.
Just yesterday, the buzz was that the federal judge who OK’d Detroit’s official move into chapter 9 bankruptcy also made comment that selling the artwork would likely not have the desired outcome of alleviating some of the city’s debt. This appears to bolster that notion, considering Detroit’s estimated id="mce_marker"8 billion in debt—hawking off the DIA collection would barely make a dent.
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[via The Huffington Post]
