In Detroit bankruptcy, what will happen to DIA?

[Coaccession]

There must be some types of protection in place for municipal assets while in receivership. Cleveland didn't lose their art institute or zoo when they entered receivership.

Cleveland's zoo belongs to Cleveland Metroparks, a political subdivision of the state, so the city's receivership didn't matter there. Finding that was easy. CMA is another matter. Their website is very upfront about the land they're on, which belongs to the city. However, the Art Institute of Chicago is in Grant Park and Chicago doesn't own that institution.

I'll quote a comment from blog.cleveland.com:

"The Museum is funded by the Public and has received numerous State and Federal Grants along with a Tax for the Arts instituted by the City of Cleveland a few years ago.
The Museum requires Climate Control for temperature,humidity etc for a considerable amount of the Publicly Owned collection.
So why do they not have back-up generators ?
Or am I living in the Jurassic Period ?"

Maybe MrSluggo has the goods on the public's ownership of that collection. The DIA is upfront now about city ownership, but when I first checked their fast facts, it had nothing about that [[if memory serves from last year). DetroitYes, on the other hand, is the best source I've found so far, especially since lilpup, Lorax and 1953 explain the caveats here [[or try to):

Cman, that's not really an exact picture of the situation. Many of the works in the DIA are on loan or were purchased by non-DIA entities. The City owns the property and some of the collection, but not all.

I believe the Founder's Society has control over operations at the museum, a role they accepted in recent years. I believe the city owns the building and land, and the collections are largely endowments which are not technically owned by the city, since they can't be sold unless voted upon by a majority of the Founder's Society board. At least that's my recollection.

I previously worked at the DIA. The building and some of the collection is owned by the city. The collection is managed by the Founders Society, which also owns some of collection. Many pieces were donated with restrictions as to what can happen to them. The museum does not make a practice of selling pieces in its collection [[with some exceptions), because it is a member of the American Museum Association. If the city were to go into bankruptcy or receivership, I am pretty certain that the museum would be spun off entirely to the founder's soceity and no one else; the founder's soceity is almost entirely funded by sources outside of the city.

As lilpup told cman710, you can't exactly believe everything you read in the DIA's annual report.

cman710 did say he'd try to find out how much art the city owns:

Lilpup, I did think that many of the works of art are probably donated, and that is a good point. I am not certain how much of the art the city owns, though I will poke around and see if I can find anything. Still, I think the value of whatever the city does own could be in the hundreds of millions.

Well, DetroitYes is good, but we haven't gotten to the bottom of city ownership yet. I suspect, however, that some of the collection is at risk in a bankruptcy -- unions are pushovers compared to bondholders! The receiver or bankruptcy judge at that point has federal authority, with supremacy over DIA bylaws and Detroit codes and Michigan laws. Federal bankruptcy code takes those into account [[e.g., you can't lose your homestead to bankruptcy in Florida), but they don't trump it in court.