O’Keeffe museum renews fight

Georgia O’Keeffe’s most famous painting, “Radiator Building -- Night, New York,” and 100 other works won’t be going to Arkansas if the museum that represents the late artist’s estate has its way.

Lawyers for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum returned to a Nashville court this week to try to prevent Fisk University from selling a stake in the collection that O’Keeffe donated to the historically black university.

The cash-strapped school wants to sell a 50% share of the collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., for $30 million.

The Santa Fe, N.M.-based O’Keeffe museum had filed an earlier lawsuit against the university’s plan to sell two works, including the “Radiator Building,” on the open market. The school and the museum then reached a settlement in which the museum would get the “Radiator Building” painting for $7.5 million and allowed the school to sell the other painting, one done by Modernist Marsden Hartley.

A judge rejected that settlement, saying the terms of the Crystal Bridges deal were better. The O’Keeffe museum then dropped its lawsuit. But it returned to court Monday, saying the new deal would violate the artist’s condition that the collection not be sold.