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.

October 24, 2007 1:26 PM | | Comments (0) |

Categories:

Leave a comment

About

CULTUREGRRL , aka Lee Rosenbaum, is your inside guide to the artworld, consulted daily by the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, scholars, critics, journalists and art lovers.
LeeAcrop.jpg

KEEP CULTUREGRRL BLOGGING! Please Contribute (Secure transaction via PayPal):
(You do not need to have your own PayPal account: Click the "continue" link at lower left of the donation page.)

ADVERTISE on CultureGrrl MUSEUMS, GALLERIES, AUCTION HOUSES, ART PUBLICATIONS, ARTS PROGRAMS---Please go here and click the "CultureGrrl" box to place an ad. For more information on advertising, e-mail here. more

LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I've been a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and the annual conference of the Museum Association of New York, and on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University. more

Contact me

Click here to send me an email...

more

Archives

Archives: 1980 entries and counting

Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection(museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Michael Conforti Profile
Making Sales Look Stronger
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on October 24, 2007 1:26 PM.

Celebrity Watch: Clooney and Roberts at the Met; Bellows in Beverly Hills was the previous entry in this blog.

What's the Scariest Thing About the Shark at the Met? is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads

Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

[advertisement]

[advertisement]

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.