With time running out for Fisk University to find a deep-pocketed donor, a private museum in New Mexico is poised to obtain an important painting by Georgia O’Keeffe at a bargain price, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

The painting, “Radiator Building — Night, New York,” is one of two artworks the financially troubled university wants to sell from a collection that O’Keeffe gave to Fisk 60 years ago. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe, had challenged the university’s right to break up the collection to sell the paintings. Under a deal brokered by the Tennessee attorney general, the museum would be allowed to buy the O’Keeffe painting for $7-million, and Fisk could sell the other work, Marsden Hartley’s “Painting No. 3,” on the open market. The deal also gave Fisk 30 days to look for buyers willing to purchase the works but keep them at the university, in Nashville, Tenn. The deadline for proposals is today.

Since the deal was made, the O’Keeffe painting has been appraised at $8.5-million, the newspaper said, and experts say it could bring in much more at auction. Jock Reynolds, director of the Yale University Art Gallery, estimated its auction value at a minimum of $20-million. “The sky’s the limit,” he told the New Mexican. He also criticized the legal maneuverings that could result in its sale to the museum for only $7-million as “ridiculous.”