The Associated Press reports on the judge’s decision in the Fisk-Georgia O’Keeffe-Crystal Bridges case where the $74 million collection of paintings by O’Keeffe, Renoir, Cezanne, Marsden Hartley and Diego Rivera hangs in the balance:
Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle agreed with Fisk’s argument at trial that the historically black university’s precarious financial state makes the school unable to exhibit the collection. But the judge said the Fisk proposal to sell a 50 percent to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark., for $30 million does not meet the terms of the donation O’Keeffe made to the school in 1949.
“Fisk either needs assistance with the Collection or Fisk needs to be replaced,” Lyle said in the ruling. […] The deal with Crystal Bridges would “dilute, override and in some cases thwart Ms. O’Keeffe’s intention,” Lyle said.
Lyle ordered the state attorney general to offer a “Nashville-based solution” within 20 days. She said a 2008 proposal to create a satellite Fisk campus within the city’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts to show the collection is a “resourceful idea, but merely hypothetical at this point.”
A similar arrangement has been adopted by the Louisville Museum to house art donated to the University of Kentucky with no-sale conditions akin to those set by O’Keeffe, according to the ruling.
Judge Rejects Fisk Deal to Sell O’Keeffe Share (BusinessWeek.com)
