Prometheus 6

Fisk can't sell any of O'Keeffe's collection
Judge says gift expressly for art education
By JONATHAN MARX
Staff Writer
Published: Wednesday, 06/13/07

A Davidson County judge told Fisk University on Tuesday that it cannot sell two paintings worth millions of dollars — or any of the 101 works of art in a collection donated to the university by artist Georgia O'Keeffe in 1949.

The university spent the past year and a half locked in a legal battle over whether it could sell two paintings from its Alfred Stieglitz Collection, O'Keeffe's Radiator Building — Night, New York and Marsden Hartley's Painting No. 3.

Fisk wanted to sell the paintings to raise funds for a variety of pressing needs, including building improvements and replenishing its endowment.

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum argued in a motion last month that Fisk should not be allowed to sell the paintings based on what it saw as a clearly defined "no-sale" condition imposed on all of the artworks in the Stieglitz Collection.

Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle agreed with the museum's motion, noting in an 18-page order that O'Keeffe donated the collection expressly for educational purposes, to be used to help Fisk students in the study of art.

After reviewing the available sources of information regarding O'Keeffe's original gift, "the only conclusion a reasonable person can reach," Lyle wrote, "is that it is the Collection as a whole, not the individual artworks, which accomplishes the educational purpose specified at the time of the donation and that the donation was not given to Fisk to use as a source of revenue….

"Dividing the Collection destroys the identity and effect and the charitable purpose (of O'Keeffe's gift). Similarly selling the entire Collection converts it into a source of revenue for the University and destroys the art educational purpose."

None of the parties involved in the case were available for comment.