LITTLE ROCK — A $30 million deal between Fisk University of Nashville, Tenn., and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art to share in an art collection is heading back to the Davidson County Chancery Court after the Tennessee Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Museum officials were pleased by the news and are waiting to see what needs to be done to resolve the matter, Don Bacigalupi, the museum’s executive director, said through a spokesman.
“As the details of the ruling are being finalized in Tennessee, we welcome the opportunity to work with both the Tennessee attorney general and the Chancery Court,” he said.
The agreement will ensure the collection remains intact and accessible by the “diverse audiences in Tennessee and Arkansas and the nation,” Bacigalupi said.
The court’s decision to pass on the case was not as well received by the staff of Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr., who seeks to stop the 101-piece Alfred Stieglitz Collection from leaving the state.
“Our office is disappointed the court did not accept our request to review the case,” said Sharon Curtis-Flair, spokesman for Cooper.
Curtis-Flair said the court announced Monday that it didn’t plan to hear the appeal. She declined to discuss specifics of the case, or speculate on how long it will take for the case to be resolved.
Tennessee has fought to keep the collection in Nashville and state attorneys have argued that the Crystal Bridges sharing agreement goes against the wishes of the late American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who donated the works to Fisk in 1949. Attorneys for the state argue approval of the deal could cause other benefactors to decide against making similar donations, for fear of their wishes being ignored.
The deal, which would give the museum a half-share of the Stieglitz collection, will be remanded to Davidson County Chancery Court, as ruled by the Tennessee Court of Appeals on Nov. 29, 2011. The appeals court approved of the museum’s purchase of a 50 percent “undivided interest” in the collection, but overturned the lower court’s ruling that Fisk dedicate two-thirds of the $30 million to creating an endowment to maintain the artwork.
Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle will once again review the agreement, which would allow Crystal Bridges to display the collection on a rotating basis every two years beginning in fall 2013, while still being displayed in Nashville half the time.
Lyle’s November 2010 ruling was appealed by Fisk and Cooper, though for different reasons.
Fisk officials argued that a much smaller endowment would suffice to cover the costs of displaying the collection and the majority of the money was needed to simply keep the university open.
Cooper’s office contends the collection was not intended to be a liquid asset for the university to dispose of at its discretion.
O’Keeffe, who was married to Stieglitz, a photographer, gallery director and collector, died in 1986, four decades after her husband’s death. She donated 97 pieces of art, that includes works by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Marsden Hartley and Charles Demuth. O’Keeffe also gave the school four of her own paintings and stipulated that the collection never be sold, nor broken up.
Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 04/25/2012