Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. on Monday asked the Tennessee Court of Appeals to hear his arguments against two lower state courts’ decisions allowing Fisk University to sell part ownership in its treasured Stieglitz Collection of art and photographs for $30 million cash.
In this latest move to block the sale of the art work donated to Fisk in 1947 and 1948 by the late Georgia O’Keeffe, Cooper asserted in papers filed with the state’s highest court that approval of the sale would reflect a misinterpretation of existing gift law governing so-called “cy pres” relief from donor restrictions on gifts and would have a “chilling” effect on the public’s desire to make major charitable donations of any kind in the future.
Cy pres is a New York legal standard followed by most courts across the nation that says any relief from a donor’s restrictions must be “as near as possible to the donor’s original intent.”
“By granting cy pres relief that removes Ms. O’Keeffe’s no-sale restrictions on the Collection and allows the sale to the Crystal Bridges (a new Arkansas museum that has offered $30 million cash to Fisk for half ownership in the collection and exhibition rights) to proceed, the Court of Appeals has changed the fundamental nature of the Stieglitz Collection, converting it from a restricted charitable gift into an unrestricted asset for the benefit of Fisk University,” Cooper says in his court papers. In doing so, he says, the court also creates the very distinct and real likelihood that the entire collection will leave Nashville and Tennessee entirely.
Cooper’s legal appeal comes two months after the Tennessee Court of Appeals decided in a 2-1 decision to clear nearly all the legal hurdles Fisk has faced in its five-year effort to monetize the 101-piece collection in order to raise badly needed funds it says would be used to pay off outstanding debts, restore funds borrowed from its endowment and seed a major capital campaign.
The November appeals court decision approved a trial court’s ruling that the collection could be sold to the Alice Walton-backed Crystal Bridges and without a key covenant imposed by the trial judge. That covenant would have placed two-thirds—$20 million—of the sale proceeds into a trust fund whose earnings could only be used by the school to support care and promotion of the art collection in Nashville. Fisk protested the covenant and won on appeal in the November decision.
Cooper, who has opposed the sale for several years on various legal grounds, had been expected to oppose the appeals court decision and went to great lengths in his petition Monday to state why he felt the appeals and trial courts have erred along the way in trying to assist Fisk in its efforts.
