Davidson County Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle has ruled that Fisk University does not have to forfeit the Stieglitz Collection -- at least for the moment. She's given the school until Oct. 6 "to renovate its Carl Van Vechten Gallery and return the collection to public display, or Fisk could risk losing the entire collection." Jonathan Marx has the story in the Nashville Tennessean.
I still don't know why it took more than two years (and who knows how much in legal fees) to get here. Lee Rosenbaum is thrilled. Fisk's NCAA athletic programs were not available for comment.
UPDATE: Richard Lacayo says the decision is a good one: "When the school gets back on its feet, it can restore its sports program. If the art were sold, it would be gone for good .... With a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the pledge of $2 million more if the school can raise $4 million by June 30, Fisk may be on the way to recovery. And when it gets there, it will still have a collection that should never have been put in play in the first place."
UPDATE 2: More from Diverse magazine, which calls the ruling "a tough blow to the O’Keeffe Museum, [which] has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past two years" on the lawsuit, and "a win and loss for Fisk. It too has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying unsuccessfully to have the court declare Fisk has sole control over the collection so it, Fisk, could sell parts or all of the collection to raise badly needed funds for the school."
