NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum may represent the painter’s estate but has no right to an art collection she donated to Fisk University, Tennessee’s Court of Appeals has ruled.

In the ruling filed last week, the court said any right O’Keeffe had to most of the 101 works of art ended with her death.

The financially struggling university had asked a lower court for permission to sell two of the works: O’Keeffe’s 1927 oil painting Radiator Building – Night, New York, and Marsden Hartley’s Painting No. 3.

The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum objected to the plan, arguing that Fisk was violating the terms of the bequest, which required the works be displayed together, and asking for the artwork to be turned over to the estate.

The Davidson County Chancery Court blocked the sale as well as a proposed $30 million arrangement to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle ordered last year that the university had to take the collection out of storage and put it back on display or forfeit it to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.

But the state appeals court overturned that decision, ruling the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has no right to the work and no standing in court.

Representatives of the museum could not immediately be reached for comment. They will have 60 days to appeal the decision.

Ninety-seven of the works were part of a collection that belonged to O’Keeffe’s late husband, the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. O’Keeffe donated those works to the university in 1949 while executing Stieglitz’s will.

The four other works in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, including O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building painting, were given to the museum later.

The ruling leaves open the possibility for an arrangement such as the one proposed with the Crystal Bridges Museum. It writes that the general intent of the gift was to make the artwork available to the public “in Nashville and the South for the benefit of those who did not have access to comparable collections.” Fisk is a historically black university, and the gifts were made at a time when the South was still segregated.

Fisk was on the verge of running out of operating money when it filed a motion for relief from O’Keeffe’s conditions in 2007.

Fisk attorney John Branham said earlier this year the latest appraisal of the collection indicated a value of about $75 million, which represents about half of Fisk’s total assets.

If the chancery court rules that Fisk does have a right to relief it will also have to decide how Fisk can honor the conditions of the gift as nearly as possible.

Fisk attorneys have argued the proposed deal with the Crystal Bridges Museum does that by keeping the collection together and allowing it to be displayed part of the year in Arkansas and part the year in Nashville.

Art historians say the collection has an appealing unity because many of the American artists were part of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz’s circle of friends. In addition to paintings by O’Keeffe and Hartley, the collection includes works by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne and Diego Rivera.

In a statement, Fisk President Hazel O’Leary said she was pleased by the ruling but expects the case will take time to conclude.

“The expense the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum has forced Fisk to incur in its effort to gain ownership of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern Art could have been committed to scholarships for our students,” she said.

AP-CS-07-15-09 1913EDT

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