Prometheus 6

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton had offered Fisk $30 million for a half-interest in the collection, which would have put it on display half-time at Fisk and half-time in Bentonville, Ark.

Fisk’s president, Hazel O’Leary, who was President Bill Clinton’s energy secretary, had made the sale a cornerstone of a turnaround for the university. She said the college would have been “at serious risk” of closing without a major cash influx. 

Fight Over an O’Keeffe Ends
By THEO EMERY

NASHVILLE, Sept. 11 — The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum dropped its claims to a signature O’Keeffe painting on Tuesday, ending a yearlong court dispute with Fisk University.

The museum, which represents O’Keeffe’s estate, had objected to a proposal by Fisk, an esteemed but financially ailing historically black university here, to sell O’Keeffe’s “Radiator Building — Night, New York,” and a work by Marsden Hartley, “Painting No. 3.”

The museum, in Santa Fe, decided to drop its claims after a judge on Monday rejected a settlement. “There was no point in going on,” said Saul Cohen, the museum’s board president.

“We have no interest in punishing Fisk,” Mr. Cohen said. “We don’t want to make their life any more difficult than it is, and so we thought the right thing to do was just to end the case.”

O’Keeffe lent “Radiator Building” and three other paintings to Fisk in 1949, and at the same time gave the school 97 pieces, including works by Picasso, Renoir and Cézanne. She later gave the four paintings to Fisk.