Settlement Forces Artist’s Fund Payout

The foundation created by the late artist Joseph Cornell will have to make grants of more than $2-million in cash before the year 2001 to carry out Mr. Cornell’s charitable wishes, according to the terms of a settlement of a lawsuit in New York.

The lawsuit was brought by Attorney General Dennis C. Vacco, who felt that the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, named for the modern artist and his brother, was paying out too little in cash grants.

Under the settlement, the fund must give $1-million in cash grants this year. Those grants will mainly support the arts and education, according to foundation lawyers, who said the fund would not accept any unsolicited proposals.

Beginning in 2001, the foundation — which has assets of $47.6-million, including art by Mr. Cornell valued at $19-million — must make at least half its grants in cash every year, instead of mainly making donations of art.

Lawyers for the foundation’s trustees said that the Attorney General failed to account for gifts of art that the fund had made to museums across the country.

But Mr. Vacco said that those donations were not enough to compensate for the paucity of cash gifts. The foundation made only one cash grant — for $1,000 — since Mr. Cornell’s death in 1972.

For more information on the foundation, write the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, c/o Lewis Helphand, 1185 Sixth Avenue, New York 10036.