Even after Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle's ruling in Chancery Court last Friday, the fate of Fisk University's Alfred Stieglitz Collection of Modern American and European Art is no clearer than it was before. But this latest round of legal squabbling over the multimillion-dollar modern-art collection has introduced a new wrinkle: the question of whether work by white artists has any value beyond financial worth to a historically black university — whose cultural mission, through the years, has been to further black identity.
Last week was the latest cliffhanger in a serialized saga. With Fisk petitioning to sell a half-interest in the collection to an eager buyer, the Crystal Bridges Museum-in-the-making in neighboring Arkansas, Chancellor Lyle ruled that she could not agree to the terms. At the same time, she told Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper, who's leading the state's legal challenge, that he has two options: put up an alternative plan, or shut up and let the collection go.
Lyle agreed that Fisk's chronic shortfalls — regularly $2 million per year — make it impractical for the school to display and maintain the collection. Fisk spends an average of $131,000 annually on the Stieglitz Collection, in compliance with conditions imposed by artist Georgia O'Keeffe in 1949. That was the year she donated the art from the estate of her late husband, the famed photographer and collector Alfred Stieglitz.
Fisk's solution to its financial woes, subject to the court's approval, is articulated in a 2007 agreement between the university and Crystal Bridges, founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton. The basic terms: For $30 million, Fisk would sell a half-interest in the 101 works in the Stieglitz Collection, valued at $74 million in 2007. The collection would rotate between Fisk's campus and the 120,000-square-foot Crystal Bridges facility, currently under construction in Bentonville, Ark.
But Lyle ruled that certain provisions in the agreement "override, thwart and dilute the purpose for which Ms. O'Keeffe made the gift." O'Keeffe's purpose, as established by the Tennessee Court of Appeals during a previous legal skirmish in 2009, was "to enable the public — in Nashville and the South — to have the opportunity to study the Collection in order to promote the general study of art."
Therein lies the rub. The deal's terms, Lyle ruled, "have the potential to divest Fisk of more than a 50 percent ownership in the Collection." For example, both institutions agree to share the cost of the collection's care. If Fisk can't pay and breaches the agreement, Crystal Bridges could gain title to more or ultimately all of the collection. And there goes O'Keeffe's purpose — the general study of the collection in Nashville.
Why does Fisk even need the court's permission? In a letter to then-Fisk President Charles S. Johnson, O'Keeffe specified that the university "will not at any time sell or exchange any of the objects in the Stieglitz Collection." Johnson readily agreed. The court can, however, modify gift conditions found to be impossible or impractical to comply with, due to changing circumstances.
The change in Fisk's circumstances, according to the university's trial brief, is clear: "Fisk was financially stable when the gift was made in 1949." Today, though, "its financial condition is likely to cause it to ultimately suspend its operations." The university asserts "the sharing arrangement with Crystal Bridges is necessary to prevent Fisk from closing."
According to legal precedent, however, the modification of gift conditions must carry out the donor's intent as closely as possible. But the Court of Appeals did not conclude that O'Keeffe intended to advance Fisk's more general educational mission with her gift. She wanted to promote the study of modern art. What's more, in a provocative and highly symbolic move, she selected a place in the segregated South where, in 1949, all of the public — not just the white public — could see it.
Lyle says she researched "to see if in other cases of financially unstable or bankrupt institutions, courts have allowed the institution to sell a charitable gift" to generate funds. "The Court located none," she states. "Instead, what the Court found is that in the case of a bankrupt institution, the charitable gift was given to another institution to carry out the charity."
"Under these circumstances," Lyle writes, "a new plan for the Collection is necessary. Fisk either needs assistance with the Collection or Fisk needs to be replaced."
The chancellor gave Fisk until Oct. 8 to submit a revised agreement with Crystal Bridges. Lyle simultaneously invited Attorney General Cooper to counter with a plan to keep the collection in Nashville. His deadline is Sept. 10, to give Fisk time to react to whatever Cooper comes up with.
"If there is a Nashville-based solution," Lyle writes, with more than a hint of exasperation, "now is the time for it to be submitted."
What might that solution be? Fisk and Cooper disagree. In a statement by Fisk, the university interprets the ruling as giving the attorney general the opportunity "to craft an alternate proposal providing Fisk with $30 million and an alternate Nashville location for display and maintenance of the Collection."
That's not how Cooper sees it. "The court has made clear that Fisk has no legal right to convert the Stieglitz Collection into cash," he says in an email. "The court has asked for proposals that respect Georgia O'Keeffe's intent by keeping the Collection in Nashville for the study of art. Any alternative proposal should relieve Fisk of the financial burden of displaying and maintaining the Collection but does not have to pay Fisk for the art."
A hypothetical solution emerged during the trial in testimony by Dr. Tommy Frist Jr., whose family founded and supports the Frist Center for the Visual Arts. Frist testified that in a 2008 meeting with Fisk President Hazel O'Leary and representatives of the school's board, attended by Frist Center board member Lee Barfield and director Susan Edwards, he offered an arrangement to relieve Fisk of some of the collection's financial burdens. At the time, the collection was in storage at the Frist Center, while Fisk renovated its Van Vechten Gallery.
"I understood we couldn't display these treasures" without violating O'Keeffe's condition that the art be shown at Fisk, Frist explained. He therefore proposed an intriguing compromise: "a condominium concept" in which space at the Frist Center would be deeded to the university, "so that it would be like another campus. Fisk would still have curatorial control, but certainly less expense" for liability insurance, climate control, security and promotions.
"And Fisk students would have access to their treasures," Frist said.
But Fisk representatives weren't interested, for 30 million obvious reasons. O'Leary came to the meeting looking for money comparable to what the Crystal Bridges deal would provide, in an arrangement the court might approve. Stieglitz-at-the-Frist would barely mitigate the university's revenue stream problems.
Fisk has been trying to convert art to cash since December of 2005, when it sought legal permission to sell outright two of the Stieglitz Collection's most valuable paintings: Georgia O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building — Night New York" (an emblematic portrait of Stieglitz painted in 1927) and Marsden Hartley's "Painting No. 3." When that petition foundered on the rocks of O'Keeffe's no-sale condition, the university's cash-raising strategy morphed into the Crystal Bridges deal. The university reasoned that selling a half interest in the whole collection, which would allow Fisk to display the art at least part of the time in Nashville, would be closer to O'Keeffe's intention and thus more acceptable to the court.
That Fisk needs money is clear. And it's understandable that O'Leary and her board, who are responsible for keeping Fisk viable, would turn to the university's most valuable assets to raise it. Especially when — as Fisk argued before Lyle — those assets are merely tangential to the historically black university's mission.
In his opening statement at the trial, Fisk attorney John Branham made the case that much of the art in the Stieglitz Collection is by "Caucasians" who weren't Southern and "never came to Nashville." Branham contrasted this "Caucasian" art with "The Three Marys," a realistic work by the noted 19th century African-American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner. "This is a prized possession of Fisk," Branham said — drawing a clear distinction between it and the Stieglitz holdings.
O'Leary explained in her testimony that Fisk seeks to grow in the sciences, "where the opportunities are boundless. That's where the federal government has placed its bets. And that's where it's placed its bets on Fisk" in the form of grants for research and scholarships. She pointed with pride to the numerous accolades Fisk continues to receive for its science programs, and for feeding its students into doctoral programs in the sciences.
In an interview with the Scene, O'Leary acknowledges that "along with a sound liberal arts grounding, it's equally important to ensure that the students appreciate their culture — their writing, arts and history." In the visual arts she specifically mentions Fisk's holdings in African-American art: the "Black Masters" series, the Harmon Collection and the Aaron Douglas murals.
"Of course I appreciate the Stieglitz Collection," she says.
O'Leary notes, however, that former Fisk President Johnson and patron Carl Van Vechten believed that the O'Keeffe gift "would uplift Fisk, would lead to other gifts of modern art. That vision didn't find firm footing."
Nor has O'Keeffe's gift found firm footing in the curriculum. According to the Fisk website, there is no course offered on the American modernism movement that the Stieglitz Collection so fully illustrates.
OK, so Fisk chooses to focus on art that strengthens the students' African-American identity. That's its privilege and its logic. Unfortunately, the Stieglitz Collection doesn't seem to get much respect from local art patrons. The Frist Center's Barfield testified that in 2007 he tested the modern art appreciation of Nashville's deep pockets. He found that "no one had a real emotional attachment to the art." Some, he admitted, characterized the Stieglitz Collection as "ugly art."
At the public unveiling of her gift to Nashville, Georgia O'Keeffe stated: "This part of the Stieglitz Collection goes to Fisk University with the hope that it may show that there are many ways of seeing and thinking, and possibly, through showing that there are many ways, give someone confidence in his own way, which may be different, whatever its direction."
The art in the Stieglitz Collection was meant to challenge the viewer with its "many ways of seeing and thinking." Decades later, the main challenge it presents is keeping it in Nashville.
