NASHVILLE, Tenn. — For the second time in as many years, Fisk University has been barred by a Tennessee court from selling an interest in its valuable art collection to raise funds for the ailing school.
The ruling here Friday also found Fisk to be in such dire financial straits it can no longer afford to care for the Alfred Stieglitz Collection of 101 paintings and photographs. It ordered Fisk and the state to make Nashville-centered proposals to remove the collection from Fisk’s responsibility in a manner that most closely reflects the intent of the collection’s donor, the late Georgia O’Keeffe, artist and widow of Stieglitz.
“It is impractical for a struggling university on the brink of closing to literally comply with Ms. O’Keeffe’s plan that Fisk maintain and display the collection,” wrote Judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle of the Chancery Court of Tennessee, 20th Judicial District.
In calling for new proposals for disposing of the collection, the judge rejected Fisk’s long-standing plan to sell 50 percent interest in the collection to the Arkansas-based Crystal Bridges Museum for $30 million, saying there are eight “provisions of the agreement (that) override, thwart and dilute the purpose for which Ms. O’Keeffe made the gift.”
O’Keeffe, who donated the collection to Fisk in the late 1940s and early 1950s to provide Nashvillians and Southerners access to the collection to promote the study of art, placed rigid conditions on her gift, including provisions that it be displayed at all times and never be sold.
The Crystal Bridges co-ownership plan ignores both restrictions, and Lyle said consideration of that plan was off the table until the objectionable portions of it were removed.
Lyle noted that under the “cy pres doctrine” used by courts nationwide to determine whether the terms of a gift can be changed, the court cannot fashion a “solution” to a petitioners’ issues “unchecked.”
