A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1882-2000

by Abt, Jeffrey

• ISBN13: 9780814328415
• ISBN10: 0814328415
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-11-01
• Publisher: Wayne State Univ Pr

Summary

The Detroit Institute of Arts is one of America's largest and oldest municipal art museums. However, even as the museum grew into a distinguished collection, there were threats of closure. The DIA has walked a financial tightrope since it opened just over a century ago, and was nearly closed by government funding cuts in the 1970s and 1990s. Now Jeffrey Abt tells how the DIA has had to struggle to maintain its fine art collection with barely enough income to remain open.

A Museum on the Verge goes behind the scenes at the DIA to disclose the political, economic, and social forces that shaped the museum from its founding to the present day. Drawing on new archival research, Abt reveals that the growing discrepancy between the museum's size and its operating budget was the result of a century of ad hoc solutions to institutional problems that left the DIA vulnerable to annual income losses -- especially reductions of government funding. He also explains its complex relations with private and government entities and delineates the integral role of the museum's s

Author Biography

Jeffrey Abt is an associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	6	(1)
Preface	7	(6)
List of Abbreviations and Symbols	13	(2)
Introduction	15	(36)
Taste and Wealth Enough to Found a Gallery, 1882--1908	51	(30)
Changing Places, Owners, and Name, 1909--1919	81	(32)
A Second Start, a New Building, and Drastic Economies 1920--1959	113	(40)
Expansions, State Rescue, and Questions of Governance 1960--1982	153	(50)
Failed Plans, Fresh Crises, and a Third Start, 1983--2000	203	(58)
Afterword	261	(8)
Appendixes	269	(30)
A: Documents	269	(11)
B: Graphs	280	(11)
C: Tables	291	(8)
Selected Bibliography	299	(8)
Index	307