Fisk-Crystal Bridges Deal: Trial Date Set; Walton's Spinners at Work

This just in: Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle has set a Feb. 19 date for a three-day trial on the question of whether Fisk University should be allowed to sell a half-share of its Stieglitz Collection to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum.

This is undoubtedly not the "expedited" trial that Fisk had been hoping for. Reporting on yesterday's court hearing, Erik Schelzig of the Associated Press writes:

Pressed by Lyle on how dire the school's financial situation is, [Fisk attorney Stacey] Garrett said the school is making a final effort to find up to $1.5 million that could keep it afloat until mid-January.

Maybe Alice can come up with a bridge loan?

Chancellor Lyle wrote that she agreed with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (which is seeking to block the sale to Crystal Bridges) that "basic and essential pretrial procedures and trial preparation cannot be accomplished, even on an expedited schedule, by the end of the year."

Meanwhile, the Crystal Bridges PR campaign arrived at my inbox on Sunday at 1:31 a.m., in the form of a note from one Elise Mitchell of the Mitchell Communications Group, who wanted to bring to my attention this previous AP article by Schelzig, which repeatedly quotes Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, taking the side of Crystal Bridges.

I sent an e-mail to Elise, who was previously unknown to me, to find out whom her company represents in relation to this controversy. Having never received a reply, I finally went to Mitchell Communications' website. No surprises: Its clients include both Crystal Bridges and Wal-Mart, the big-box giant to which Alice Walton owes her fortune.

Here are some Jock Reynolds quotes from the AP article, with my own rejoinders:

Saul Cohen [president of the O'Keeffe Museum] is fantasizing about what he thinks O'Keeffe wanted. [Actually, what the artist who donated the Stieglitz Collection to Fisk wanted is clearly spelled out in her written stipulations to Fisk.]

At least a partnership of sharing the collection and keeping it intact is more desirable...than to just break it up and sell things off. [I don't favor either course of action, but I think it's arguable whether the scuttled agreement with the O'Keeffe Museum, which would have removed TWO highly important paintings from the 101-work collection (with one to be occasionally lent back), is any worse than the Fisk-Walton deal, which would remove ALL the paintings from Fisk for half of the time.]

Reynolds' assessment of the O'Keeffe Museum's officials: They're the most hypocritical bunch of looters I've ever run across.

Opportunists, who thought they saw a chance to nab a masterpiece, O'Keeffe's "Radiator Building," for the bargain price of $7.5 million? Probably.

Hypocritical, in setting themselves up as defenders of O'Keeffe's interests when they're really out to further their own? Quite possibly.

But "looters"? They're not exactly prying a painting off the wall in the dead of night. The fate of the Stieglitz Collection will be decided, eventually, in a court of law.