A Tennessee appeals court late Tuesday gave embattled Fisk University permission to sell half ownership interest of the school’s treasured Alfred Stieglitz Collection of art and photographs for $30 million dollars cash with no significant restrictions on use of the funds.
It could be as much as a year before any of the money is seen, as the appeals court sent Fisk’s latest plan for the sale back to a trial court in Nashville with orders to provide more detail on how Fisk would be able to hold up its part of the promised responsibilities to maintain and care for the collection over the long term.
Otherwise, the appeals court opinion was a strongly worded rebuke of several key parts of the trial court decision approving the sale, repeatedly siding with Fisk that the trial court had exceeded its power in fashioning relief for the impoverished school in several respects, including restricting the use of the $30 million.
The Stieglitz collection was given to Fisk more than half a century ago by the late Georgia O’Keeffe with strict conditions barring the sale or loan of any part or all of the collection. It includes paintings by O’Keeffe, including the famous Radiator Building, photos by Stieglitz, her late husband, and works by Diego Rivera, Renoir, Picasso, Dove and other Impressionists era artists. While Fisk owns the art, it has been unable to maximize the value of ownership as it does not own copyright of the art.
Delays aside, the three-judge appeals panel approved the ownership sale plan to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas and said Fisk could ignore the trial court’s decision last year that required most — $20 million — of the proceeds to be placed in a fund from which the school could only use earned income from the fund, then, solely for the purpose of caring for the collection.
Fisk, which has been battling for the right to raise badly needed revenue through the art collection sale, protested that part of the trial court’s decision approving the sale, asserted placing the bulk of the sale money in a restricted endowment was “grossly excessive and unnecessary.” The appeals court agreed.
The appeals court also approved Fisk’s proposed “sharing agreement” allowing the collection to be housed and exhibited on a rotating basis — two years in Nashville, where it has been since the early 1950s and two years in Arkansas at the Crystal Bridges Museum, a facility backed by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton.
