Fisk University will get another chance to get the market price for a Georgia O’Keeffe painting that it wants to sell, the Associated Press reported.
Tennessee’s attorney general, Robert E. Cooper Jr., blocked the sale of the painting today to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum for $7-million, a price that art lovers believe is millions below its real value. The cash-strapped university has been offered as much as $25-million for the painting, “Radiator Building — Night, New York,” but Fisk had agreed to sell it to the museum, in Santa Fe, N.M., unless the university could raise $7-million in donations, which would allow it to keep the painting, by the middle of March.
After Fisk failed to line up such a donor, it sought to rework the agreement. But Mr. Cooper, who brokered the agreement between Fisk and the museum, had to sign off on any divergence from the original deal. Today he went along with Fisk’s request, citing the possibility that the university could get much more for the iconic work if it had more time to sell. —Martin Van Der Werf
