College Argues For the Right To Sell Art Gifts To Raise Capital

"Getting rid of the 'Radiator Building' is like an institution getting rid of an amazing set of scientific papers," says Richard Powell, who heads the department of art and art history at Duke University.

It was Powell who teamed with Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, to curate "To Conserve a Legacy: American Art From Historically Black Colleges and Universities," an exhibit that toured the East Coast in 2000.

About 30 0f the 105 HBCUs have art collections, but "none of them matches the kind of depth and extensiveness of the Fisk collection," Powell says.

"It's really unfortunate that they can't find a way to maintain their legacy and find some other ways of supporting their institution," he says.

This isn't the first time Fisk has considered selling pieces of the collection. In 1985, it decided against a proposal to sell all or part of the collection to pay down its debt and grow an endowment that had fallen from $14 million in 1968 to $3 million in 1984.

Henry Ponder, a former Fisk president who served from 1984 to 1996, says the school instead "made a few friends along the way" and launched a fundraising campaign to address the problem.

"The collection is a priceless object," Ponder says. "Georgia O'Keeffe is dead; you can't make that anymore." People and institutions have money troubles all the time, and, in Fisk's case, "you just have to assume you don't have the art collection and do what you would if you didn't have it," he says.

Too often the fine-art collections at schools are grossly undervalued, says Tina Dunkley, art gallery director at another HBCU, Clark Atlanta University. "And by 'undervalued,' I'm not referring to the market value but to the instrumental value of the collection, the pedagogical value.

"I still say that if there isn't strong visionary leadership on the part of the board and the president with regards to raising funds outside of deciding to sell your soulful goods, I suspect that they could be back in the same position not too soon after -- selling something else."

Counters Fisk spokesman West, "Our core operation is to educate students to be stewards of social and intellectual and institutional power. "While the [collection] is certainly a part of humanizing the character, this is something we need to do," he says.

O'Leary emphasizes that the move would be a "shot in the arm" aimed at, among other things, saving the remaining 99 pieces of the collection. In previous interviews, she's noted that the school is not equipped to maintain a collection of its value and type. And there are more than 3,800 other pieces of art that Fisk owns outside of the Stieglitz collection, O'Leary points out.

Although a small e-mail campaign denouncing the school's plans for the two pieces went on for months, she says it is fair to say that "the majority of the folks understood."

School officials expect a decision in Davidson County Chancery Court this year.

O'Leary believes that the sale wouldn't discourage prospective donors from giving Fisk art in the future. However, "Anybody that's likely to give me a painting, I'd wish they'd give Fisk 40,000 bucks," she says. "What we need to remain competitive is capital."