BENTONVILLE : Museum donations listed in brief filed by university
Posted on Thursday, August 21, 2008
Alice Walton, her family and one of their foundations have donated $ 317 million to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which has nearly half a billion dollars in assets, according to documents filed in a Tennessee court.
Fisk University in Nashville included the information in a brief appealing a lower court’s decision to bar a $ 30 million deal between the university and Crystal Bridges. The deal would have split ownership of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection between the university and the Bentonville museum.
Walton, the Wal-Mart heiress, announced her plans in 2005 to build the museum near Central Avenue and J Street at an estimated cost of $ 50 million. Officials have been tightlipped about funding since. Construction continues on the building, scheduled to open in 2010.
Museum Executive Director Bob Workman said late last year that plans for the museum had grown, but would not disclose how much more it would cost.
The Fisk brief reveals that $ 138 million of the museum’s $ 488 million in assets are “liquid.” The information was attributed to an undated deposition from Workman.
Beyond the Walton funding, it’s unclear where the remaining $ 171 million in assets originated.
Workman declined to elaborate on the deposition Wednesday.
“At this time, we are not sharing our project costs or any details about project assets,” Workman wrote in an email. “Crystal Bridges is a gift to the community from Alice Walton and the Walton family. The focus is on what we are creating, not what it is costing.” Walton, her two brothers and sister-in-law are each worth an estimated $ 16 billion by Forbes. com. Crystal Bridges reportedly spent $ 35 million on the painting Kindred Spirits in 2005 and was a joint partner with the National Gallery of Art on a $ 68 million offer for Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic in 2006. The Eakins offer was matched and awarded to a collaboration of groups in Philadelphia. Months later, Crystal Bridges announced it purchased Eakins’ portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand for an undisclosed amount. Last November, Walton and other museum officials attended an American painting and sculpture auction at Sotheby’s in New York City where some works sold for several million dollars, but there was no word of any items purchased by Crystal Bridges. The museum is expected to include space for between 200 and 300 pieces. Only a handful of paintings and a rare book are known to be included in the collection. The museum, designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, is scheduled to include 100, 000 square feet of gallery space, a library, 250-seat auditorium and a sculpture garden. In 1949, American painter Georgia O’Keeffe donated the Stieglitz Collection to historically black Fisk University. It contains works by her and her husband — the late photographer Alfred Stieglitz — and other artists. Court approval is necessary because Fisk is trying to change the parameters of the gift, which stipulated the collection remain intact, on display and never sold. The agreement is opposed by the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N. M., which argues it is the successor to the late painter’s estate. A judge had rejected an agreement with Fisk and the New Mexico museum earlier in 2007 that would have allowed the museum to buy just the collection’s premier painting — O’Keeffe’s Radiator Building — Night, New York — for $ 7. 5 million. The judge cited the $ 30 million offer from Crystal Bridges as a reason why she declined the agreement.
To contact this reporter: aotoole@arkansasonline. com
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
