Email Article

Printable Page

Fisk Has Right to Sell Paintings

By The Meter Editorial Board
Black College Wire

If something is given to you, it's yours to do with as you please. Well, that's the conventional wisdom many of us were raised with and still hold to be true.

fisk.edu Fisk president Hazel O'Leary with students in 2005

Back in 1949 a collection of paintings was given to Fisk University by its artists Albert Stieglitz and his wife, Georgia O'Keeffe.

In Stieglitz's will he left 99 pieces of his artwork to Fisk University upon his death.

When his wife gave the pieces, she also gave two pieces of her own work, which she received a tax deduction for.

About two years ago, officials at Fisk, including the president, Hazel O'Leary, an alumnus of the university, decided there should be more opportunities for the students of the prestigious and historical university.

Therefore, O'Leary and her team proposed a plan, before the courts, to allow the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas to house the paintings for a certain amount of time.

With the museum in Arkansas housing the paintings, Fisk could have gained $30 million that they would have used to open doors for more students. However, the courts did not approve their proposal.

Somehow, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., found out about the proposal before Fisk took it to the courts and felt they were entitled to the paintings.

How can the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum claim the right to the paintings? Do they really have the right to decide the final destination of the paintings?

In our humble opinion the answer is clearly, no! The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum does not have any rights whatsoever to the paintings because the paintings never came from that museum.

The paintings came personally from Stieglitz and O'Keeffe with no intermediary.

We think the paintings should be left at Fisk where the artists wanted them to be. If Stieglitz and O'Keeffe wanted the paintings to be at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, they would have given the paintings to them after Stieglitz's death.

The question still remains; why was there even a trial brought forth over these paintings?

Once the courts denied the proposal, the entire situation with the paintings should have been dropped. But that would bear a striking resemblance to the right thing to do.

In our litigious society, lawsuits have surpassed baseball as America's pastime.

However, instead of the situation being dropped, it has then turned into a long drawn out trial that has had President O'Leary sitting on the edge of her seat and Fisk hanging by a string. Our solution would be to just leave the paintings where the two artists intended them to be.

If the artists wanted the paintings at the museum in New Mexico, that is where they would have been from day one.

If the courts do decide that the paintings will go to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, they are denying Fisk their basic rights of ownership.

The paintings belong on the campus of Fisk University where the artists left them to be used at the discretion and benefit of the university.

The collection itself is invaluable and if anything this should mobilize Fisk alumni to dig deep into their pockets and donate to their Alma Mater so the paintings will remain.

This editorial was originally published in The Meter, the Tennessee State University student newspaper.

Posted Feb. 28, 2008