Stieglitz collection to debut at Crystal Bridges on Nov. 9

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

A 101-piece collection of art and objects by Alfred Stieglitz will make its Arkansas debut Nov. 9 at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

The debut will happen more than a year after the end of a seven-year legal battle waged in Tennessee courts over an agreement between Crystal Bridges and Fisk University to share the collection. Stieglitz’s widow, renowned painter Georgia O’Keeffe, gave Fisk University the collection in 1949.

Two of O’Keeffe’s works, her 1927 iconic painting of the Radiator Building, Night, New York (1927), and Flying Backbone (1944), are part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection. It also includes a 1904 oil painting by Pablo Picasso, two color lithographs by Auguste Renoir and works by American modernist artists Marsden Hartley, John Marin and Arthur Dove, the latter being members of a group known as “The Stieglitz Circle.”

The modernist era has been described as a time when bright colors entered the palettes of painters and the first nonobjective paintings were displayed in galleries.

Crystal Bridges paid $30 million for its half interest in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, about half of which Fisk placed in its permanent restricted endowment, according to a news release from the university in August 2012, when the deal was finalized.

Tennessee’s attorney general had argued that selling any part of the collection was against the wishes of O’Keeffe.