Nashville stands to lose important works if sale goes through. Nashvillians should understand the stakes if paintings by Georgia O‘Keeffe and Marsden Hartley are sold from the Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University to raise money for the university, says art historian Vivien Green Fryd of Vanderbilt University. “Radiator Building was personally donated by O‘Keeffe, possibly because it is a wonderful example of the series of works she painted which represented New York City‘s new, modern skyscrapers,” Fryd said. “She also created an emblematic portrait of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, whose name is inscribed in the work.” Hartley‘s Painting #3 is also an important work, Fryd says. “Having been done while Hartley was living and working in Berlin during the first World War, this work illustrates his so-called ‘cosmic cubism,‘ which combines aspects of analytical cubism with German Expressionism to convey spiritual feelings and the excitement he perceived in Germany through the pageants, military parades and pomp and splendor of the city.
Vivien Green Fryd, professor of American art history and American studies, is the author of Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Georgia O‘Keeffe and Edward Hopper, in which she discusses O‘Keeffe‘s Radiator Building in detail. She can provide additional information about the importance of the Steiglitz collection in general, for the city of Nashville and for Fisk University.
Media contact: Jim Patterson,(615) 322-NEWS
jjim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu