University’s plan to share with museum art tossed

? A judge on Friday threw out Fisk University’s $30 million proposal to share an art collection with a museum founded by a Wal-Mart heiress in Arkansas.

Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle said the deal was not in keeping with the wishes of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who donated the 101-piece collection to the historically black university in 1949.

Lyle said O’Keeffe never meant for the cash-strapped school to use it for fundraising purposes.

The art-sharing proposal would have seen the collection travel between Nashville and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. The museum was founded by Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton.

A trial scheduled for later this month will now determine whether Fisk should forfeit the entire collection to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in New Mexico.

The Santa Fe museum is the legal representative of the artist’s estate. Its attorneys argue that the school has been violating O’Keeffe’s conditions that the collection be kept on display and not sold.