The Tennessee Attorney General may have again disrupted a legal settlement that would give Fisk University some much needed funds from selling off part of its art collection.
The school has been in a years-long court battle with the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe over control of the 101-piece Stieglitz collection, donated by O’Keeffe in 1949. Fisk wants to sell the two most valuable paintings to replenish its endowment. The museum says the collection can’t be broken up unless one of the paintings goes to Santa Fe.
The two parties agreed on a settlement earlier this year, but Attorney General Bob Cooper – as the state’s steward of charitable gifts – said they should take more time to find other solutions that would keep the entire collection in Nashville. Cooper was then named as a third party in the case.
Fisk and the O’Keeffe Museum reached another settlement this month, but today Cooper filed a motion in Davidson County Court that urges the judge not to accept the terms, which Cooper characterizes as a sale masked as a settlement.
O’Keeffe Museum board president Saul Cohen says he’s becoming impatient.
“I have been told the Attorney General is a very competent attorney, and yet he cannot see the difference between the settlement of litigation and a sale.”
Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle will have the final say in her courtroom next week. A hearing on the settlement is scheduled for Thursday.
Fisk officials say reaching a settlement soon is critical to the financial situation on campus.
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