Shades of Detroit: Is near-bankrupt Greece facing its DIA moment?

The folks over at CityLab, an online publication that focuses on urban issues, have come up with an interesting comparison between financially crumbling Greece and formerly bankrupt Detroit.
Like the Motor City, the Greeks are now facing the prospect of putting on the auction block some of their most precious cultural assets in order to keep the country financially afloat.
Over the weekend, Greece agreed to demands from Germany and other European leaders designed to keep the country in the Eurozone. Part of that pact includes Greece sequestering $55 billion in assets to be sold or privatized for the purpose of repaying its creditors and recapitalizing its banks.

Here’s where the CityLab connection comes into play:

“Back in 2013, Kevyn Orr, the bankruptcy lawyer appointed as Detroit’s emergency manager, announced plans to assess for sale the collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts, one of the largest and most significant art collections in the country. The scheme would have seen major parts of the (DIA)ollection, those that belonged to the City of Detroit, sold or auctioned to repay the city’s debts.

“In November 2014, a federal judge approved a “grand bargain” that resolved Detroit’s bankruptcy and saved the city’s art collection. In the end, the value of the collection as a whole prevailed over the sum of its parts; the museum, a number of private foundations and donors, and the state raised more than $800 million to secure the city’s outstanding pension debts and keep the collection in Detroit forever—or until the next time.

“Had the threat against the Detroit Institute of Arts never materialized, the city might still be mired in bankruptcy proceedings today. Still, an outcome that preserved the museum collection was never certain. Creditors argued against it. Some of them said that they had found buyers willing to pay $2 billion for all of the (DIA) art owned by the city, far more than the $800 million estimate procured by the city.”