Just read a Los Angeles Times report that the Tennessee Supreme Court has rejected an attempt to keep Fisk University from sharing its Stieglitz Collection of Modern American and European Art with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Barring any further legal action, that means the Bentonville museum will have a 50 percent share in the collection, which includes Georgia O’Keeffe’s famed “Radiator Building — Night, New York 1927” and works by American modernists Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Stanton McDonald-Wright, John Marin, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz and others, as well as Cezanne, Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and other Europeans.
The state of Tennessee tried to stop the deal, under which CBMAA pays the Nashville school $30 million. Fisk will go back to lower courts to work out administrative details.
O’Keeffe donated the collection to Fisk in 1949. Some who follow museum business have objected to the deal, as a violation of O’Keeffe’s intention in offering the school the collection. The school, however, has had financial difficulty and saw Alice Walton’s offer as a way to improve its facility and its curation of the collection.