NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Tennessee’s Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of a lower court ruling that a New Mexico museum has no rights to an art collection at Fisk University in Nashville.
The financially struggling university had asked the Davidson County Chancery Court for permission to sell two of the works from its Stieglitz collection – Georgia O’Keeffe’s 1927 oil painting “Radiator Building – Night, New York,” and Marsden Hartley’s “Painting No. 3.”
The 101 works in the collection were donated to Fisk by O’Keeffe, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe, N.M., had sued the school. It claimed Fisk was violating the terms of the bequest, which required the works be displayed together, and asked that the artwork to be turned over to the O’Keeffe estate, which it represents.
Fisk later proposed a $30 million arrangement to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark. – a plan the O’Keeffe Museum also opposed.
Tennessee’s Court of Appeals ruled in July the O’Keeffe Museum has no standing in court, because any right the painter might have had to the collection ended with her death. Spokesman Ryan Stark on Tuesday said the museum had no comment on the case.
It is now up to the Chancery Court to decide whether Fisk can sell any of the work.
“We’re aware we still have a long way to go, but we’re looking at it as good news,” Fisk spokesman Ken West said on Tuesday.
Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper, in a statement, cautioned that Monday’s decision by the Supreme Court does not mean the school has a right to sell any of the artwork.
The attorney general’s office earlier received permission to intervene in the case and represent the people of Tennessee’s wishes to keep the collection in the state.
Cooper said on Tuesday the appeals court opinion held that Fisk could only modify the conditions placed on the gift under “extremely limited circumstances.”
“Given Fisk’s recent reaccreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools … the university can no longer argue that the sale of the Collection is necessary to its financial survival,” Cooper wrote.
Fisk was on the verge of running out of operating money when it filed a motion for relief from the conditions of the bequest in 2007. Fisk attorney John Branham said last year the collection had been appraised at about $75 million.
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On the Net:
Fisk University: http://www.fisk.edu
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum: http://www.okeeffemuseum.org
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art: http://www.crystalbridges.org
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AP-WS-02-23-10 1709EST