NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen thinks Fisk University has entered into a bad deal by agreeing to sell half its ownership of an art collection donated by Georgia O'Keeffe for $30 million.

The cash-strapped historically black university has asked a Nashville judge to approve the arrangement to sell a 50 percent stake in the 101-piece collection to an Arkansas museum founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton. The collection would be shared on an equal-time basis.

"As a businessperson, I would be very concerned at the deal Fisk has cut with the museum in Arkansas," said Bredesen, who founded a publicly traded health care company before entering politics.

The artworks given to Fisk in 1949 include O'Keeffe's own 1927 oil painting, Radiator Building — Night, New York, and works by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth and Alfred Maurer.

The artworks were part of the nearly 1,000-piece collection of O'Keeffe's husband, photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz, that she gave away after he died in 1946.

Fisk earlier tried to sell the Radiator Building and Hartley's Painting No. 3 on the open market, but was blocked by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.

A judge rejected a later settlement agreement that would have sent the Radiator Building painting to the O'Keeffe museum for $7.5 million and allowed the school to sell the Hartley painting on the open market.

A trial is scheduled for February to decide whether Fisk's agreement to share the collection with the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Ark., is close enough to O'Keeffe's wishes to be approved. O'Keeffe died in 1986.

Bredesen, a Democrat, said estimates from art experts and insurers indicate the collection "could easily be worth $150 million."

"And $30 million for half of it is not a very good deal," he said.

Bob Workman, executive director of Crystal Bridges Museum, said the agreed-upon price reflects restrictions placed on the collection by O'Keeffe when she gave it to the school.

"This is a creative, long-term way to satisfy Ms. O'Keeffe's demand that the collection remain intact, to provide needed funds for Fisk University and to keep this historic collection in the public domain," Workman said in a statement.

A Fisk spokesman did not immediately return a phone message.

As a former Nashville mayor, Bredesen also said he would also like to see the collection stay in the city and state. Bredesen said he's unhappy with the latest proposal.

"Ultimately the court and Fisk have got to decide, are you going to sell this thing or not?" Bredesen said. "And if not, fine. Put it aside and get on with other ways of solving the Fisk problem."

"If you're going to sell it, I'd rather they go out and sell it properly and take the money and put it in the bank and secure Fisk's long-term future," he said.




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