Fisk U. Wins Final OK to Sell Georgia O’Keeffe Art Gift

The seven-year legal battle over Fisk University’s plan to sell a half-share in its $74-million Alfred Stieglitz art collection ended last week when a Tennessee court gave final approval to the deal, The Tennessean reports.

The ruling in Davidson County Chancery Court means that the historically black university in Nashville will share 101 works donated by the late painter Georgia O’Keeffe, Mr. Stieglitz’s wife, with the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, Ark. The museum, a project of the Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, opened last year.

Crystal Bridges will pay $30-million for a 50-percent ownership of the trove, which includes paintings by O’Keeffe, Picasso, Renoir and other masters. The institutions will alternate displays of the collection over two-year periods, beginning this fall.

The cash-strapped university had said it could be forced to close unless allowed to capitalize on the collection, which Ms. O’Keeffe gave Fisk in 1949, asking that it not be sold or split up. The chancery court’s ruling follows the Tennessee Supreme Court’s rejection in April of state efforts to block the sale.

Tennessee officials and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., had argued against the sale, which Saul Cohen, the museum’s former president, said violated Ms. O’Keeffe’s intent.