Fisk University has quietly consummated its controversial plan to sell half of its ownership in the prestigious Stieglitz Collection of art and photographs for $30 million cash and other considerations to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the new Arkansas-based venue backed by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton.
Lawyers for the historic institution and the museum reportedly negotiated the final sale plan during the last few months and concluded the deal in mid-June, according to sources knowledgeable with the so-called ownership sharing plan. Fisk this week stayed mum on the matter.
“We are not permitted to talk about this until the final order is issued by the chancery court,” Fisk said in a statement this week, in referring to a requirement by the Tennessee Supreme Court that the university and museum outline in greater detail to a Nashville trial court their long-term plan for caring for the collection. That process, which has not commenced, is widely considered a routine matter with no major legal questions over the proposed ownership sale to be argued.
“We are looking forward to working with Fisk University as we enter our collection sharing partnership and begin presenting the Stieglitz Collection to the very large—and growing—Crystal Bridges audience,” said a museum statement quoting Don Bacigalupi, executive director.
The Alfred Stieglitz Collection of art and photographs is a 101-piece collection given to Fisk in the late 1940s by the late artist Georgia O’Keeffe, widow of photographer Stieglitz. Her gift included a shopping list of rigid stipulations governing the gift. Among the stipulations was a prohibition on the collection being sold or broken into parts.
Fisk, beset with debt, falling enrollment and no generous benefactors over the past two decades, decided nearly a decade ago to seek court relief from the O’Keeffe restrictions in order to monetize the collection to help save the school. The university’s formal legal efforts, dating to the fall of 2005, encountered a headwind of opposition along the way.
The Tennessee Attorney General argued that the idea of selling any part of the collection or ownership and having it travel for long periods of time ran counter to nationally recognized legal standards of charitable giving that stress honoring the “original intent” of a donor. Any deviation, the state ordered, should closely reflect the wishes of the donor under legal criteria called cy pres standards.
