Source: News You Should Know
The Nashville institution is getting flack for trying to sell a prestigious art collection
Fisk University in Nashville, like many historically Black colleges, is facing some hard financial times. In fact, Fisk’s money woes are such that to stay afloat fisk-university.jpgit must sell half of its stake in an astonishing collection of artworks for $30 million.

Even though the sale could keep the 142-year-old institution from going under, officials at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum say the university is violating O’Keeffe’s wishes by selling the works, and they want the entire collection shipped to Sante Fe, N.M. O’Keeffe, according to the wishes of her late husband, Alfred Stieglitz, divided a significant portion of the 1,000-piece collection of paintings, sculpture, prints and photos among six universities nearly six decades ago. Included in the collection given to Fisk were works by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, George Grosz, Arthur Dove and John Marin, The Associated Press reports. Fisk, which was established during Reconstruction to educate newly freed slaves, certainly isn’t the only Black college in dire straits.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools placed FAMU on probation in June after a peer review learned that the Tallahassee school had mismanaged its finances. Morris Brown College in Atlanta lost its ability to receive federal student aid funds when it failed accreditation four years ago and is struggling to survive. Fellow Tennessee HBCU LeMoyne- Owen College in Memphis was about to close its doors amid financial ruin, but the city bailed the school out with a $3 million gift, the second life-saving infusion of funds in 10 years. Do you think historically Black colleges are as relevant today as they were 100 or so years ago, when they were established?