Latest Developments in Maier and Fisk Deaccession Attempts

A motion for an injunction to stop the Maier Museum sales has just been filed in Lynchburg Circuit Court by 19 plaintiffs, including Randolph College students and alumnae, Maier donors, former Maier Museum associate director Ellen Agnew and former Randolph College director of museum studies Laura Katzman.

You can read the complaint here. You can read the announcement of the filing of the motion here. Preserve Educational Choice, the group spearheading the campaign against the sale of four Maier paintings at Christie's, has also called on Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell to intervene.

In other news of controversial deaccessioning, Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle of Tennessee Chancery Court, Davidson County, has granted Fisk University's motion to amend its previous request for permission to raise cash from its Stieglitz Collection. The amended complaint asks for permission to sell a half-share in the entire collection to Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum. (The prior request, turned down by Chancellor Lyle, was for permission to sell two paintings---a Georgia O'Keeffe to the O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe and a Marsden Hartley on the open market.) But no decision will be made as to whether Fisk and Crystal Bridges will actually be allowed to do the deal until after a forthcoming trial in Lyle's court on the substantive issues. At this writing, the date has not yet been set.