Donor's Gift Could Keep Art At Fisk University

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Oct 23rd 2010 at 8:01PM

We've been following the case of the Stieglitz art collection at Fisk University since last summer but a new twist could keep the collection donated by painter Georgia O'Keefe at the campus with no cost to the school. Fisk has asked the court for permission to sell a 50 percent share in the collection saying that it could face bankruptcy without the $30 million the sale to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas and that it can no longer afford to maintain and display the collection. Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle already rejected a plan to relocate the collection to Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts.

The Tennessean reports that Fisk alumna Carol Creswell-Betsch has created a fund that could pay the maintenance and display costs of the collection if the court approves. The fund is named for Creswell-Betsch's mother, Pearl Creswell, who was the first curator of the Stieglitz collection. A separate brief filed by the Attorney General on Friday argued that the plan to sell a share to the museum planned by Walmart heiress Alice Walton would void the protected status of the collection. The brief goes on to say that this would leave the art open to being seized by creditors if Fisk were to declare bankruptcy. Both moves leave the university without the argument of maintenance costs for the collection and so the main reason for the proposed sale to Crystal Bridges hinges on the fact that the school will fail without that $30 million.

O'Keeffe donated the 101-piece collection of paintings, photographs, drawings and sculptures from her late husband, noted photographer Alfred Stieglitz to the school in 1949. The collection is housed in the Carl Van Vechten gallery and includes works by Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, O'Keeffe, Demuth, Hartley, Dove and Walkowitz.

Tags: alfred stieglitz, fisk university, georgia okeefe