Art Sale Benefits Fisk and Community

Art historian Michael Baxendall has argued that the pleasure of ownership drove the consumption of visual art in fifteenth century Europe, but his conclusion certainly applies to the ownership of art today. However, this pleasure of possession stems directly from displaying the artwork in question. A painting relegated to the storage closet is merely colored goop on canvas, to borrow a favorite phrase of my thesis advisor, and is of no use to anybody except as a store of value for the artist’s labor and talent.

In accordance with the principle that worthwhile art should be displayed as much as possible, Robert Scull, the owner of a taxicab fleet in New York, held an auction in 1973 with the help of Sotheby’s in order to liquidate his large collection of abstract expressionist and minimalist art. In John Schott’s and E.J. Vaughn’s documentary film about the event, America’s Pop Collector: Robert C. Scull—Contemporary Art at Auction, Scull noted that his collection, which included a number of works by artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Willem de Kooning, rarely saw the light of the day, and instead sat languishing in storage. Scull further maintained that the auction’s primary purpose was to ensure that his artwork would reach the public eye, a statement consistent with his collection practices, which seemed to indicate that he truly supported and patronized the cutting-edge artists of the day as opposed to merely cynically investing in their works and selling them back at a profit. While the auction made well over $2 million in profit, all of the works auctioned found their way out of Scull’s warehouses, and, as art historian Baruch Kirschenbaum notes, several of the works would eventually find their way into museums.

Despite the prestige and honor that this auction brought to the artists whose works were exhibited, protesters swarmed the auction. With arguments running the gamut from accusations of exploitation to condemnations of the production of art exclusively for the elite class, they took to the streets outside the auction house with signs, banners, and chants. Rauschenberg himself showed up and demanded that Scull buy any forthcoming work of his for prices comparable to the prices that his works fetched at auction—no small demand, given that Scull bought Rauschenberg’s Double Feature in 1959 for $2,500 before reselling it in 1973 for $90,000, Kirschenbaum writes. The issue of profiteering at the expense of artists overshadowed the Scull auction.

Almost thirty-five years after that auction, another contentious sale of art is in progress, this time, right here in Nashville, Tennessee. Fisk University, the current owner of a large portion of the Alfred Stieglitz collection, has met significant fiscal difficulties in recent years, and may not be able to sustain its operations beyond the upcoming spring semester without a significant influx of cash.

In an attempt to maintain its already shaky financial footing, the university is currently trying to sell a number of its works against the wishes of the collection’s donor, the late artist Georgia O’Keeffe, whose will requires that the collection remain intact. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, representing the estate of the artist, has so far successfully stopped any transaction that Fisk might undertake to stave off insolvency.

However, Davidson County Chancery Court judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle blocked an initial settlement between the university and the museum, which would have seen Fisk directly sell O’Keeffe’s own painting Radiator Building – Night to the O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for an estimated $7.5 million. She argued that such a settlement would be “detrimental to the interests of the people of Tennessee,” according to the New York Times. Chancellor Lyle’s veto, however, came on the heels of a new offer from the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, which recently offered $30 million for a 50% share in the Alfred Stieglitz collection.

The O’Keeffe Museum objected to this new offer that would have also resulted in the division of the Alfred Stieglitz collection, which also includes works by Picasso, Renoir, and Cézanne. Moreover, the museum’s president, Saul Cohen, has demanded the return of the entire collection to the O’Keeffe Museum, citing the university’s inability to display the collection, which currently lies in storage in the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, and the university’s apparent desire to break up the collection. In an Associated Press story, he states, “Since the conditions [of the bequest] have been breached, the gift should revert to the museum, which is standing in Georgia O'Keeffe's shoes.”

As Fisk’s lawyers have argued, “the Museum is not a credible arbiter of O'Keeffe's intent.” The museum’s apparent single-mindedness in its pursuit to retake the collection certainly lends credence to this claim. If the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum truly wishes to claim that it represents O’Keeffe’s wishes, it should drop its objections to the latest proposed sale. By withdrawing its legal objections to Fisk’s sale of a 50% stake in the collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum, the O’Keeffe Museum has the opportunity to ensure both the proper display of the artworks and the financial stability of a historic university, surely goals O’Keeffe herself must have supported given the mere fact of her original donation to Fisk.

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In spite of the credit crisis, most customers who go to a fine art auction, aren't affected by the middle class press or imploding housing market, as 6,000 to 7,000 eager bidders appeared at many of the fine art auctions this year.