A judge has denied Fisk University’s bid to share its $30-million art collection with an Arkansas museum, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The historically black institution had hoped to join forces with a planned museum in Bentonville, Ark., financed by a Wal-Mart heiress.

The judge, Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle of the Davidson County Chancery Court, has also prevented the financially troubled university from selling any of the artworks in the past.

The collection belonged to the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz and was given to Fisk in 1949 by his wife, the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Chancellor Lyle said the gift was made to call attention to Fisk, which was founded in 1866 and educated black students in the South during segregation.

A February 19 trial to evaluate the art-sharing proposal will now shift to consider arguments from lawyers for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe, N.M., over its claim on the 101-piece collection, which includes works not only by O’Keeffe but by Picasso, Renoir, and Marsden Hartley. The Santa Fe museum’s lawyers say Fisk has violated the artist’s wishes that the works be displayed. Fisk officials say they will fight to keep the collection. —Heidi Landecker