Will Walton Win?

Alice Walton's chances of taking a 50 percent stake in Fisk University's Alfred Stieglitz Collection are looking better and better.

Her offer depends upon the rejection of a settlement proposed by the university, located in Nashville, Tennessee, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, and on Friday, Tennessee Attorney General Robert E. Cooper filed a brief against their proposed resolution. The museum took up litigious arms after the university expressed it wishes to deaccession pieces in order to lighten the load of its financial woes, arguing that O'Keeffe donated the collection for teaching purposes and meant for it to stay in tact. The settlement would allow the museum to buy O'Keeffe's Radiator Building — Night, New York from Fisk for $7.5 million, and allow the university to sell a Marsden Hartley work from the collection, as well.

A Nashville court is slated to rule on the terms of the truce this Thursday. If it sides with Cooper, there's no doubt Walton will move in quickly.

Check out Donn Zaretsky's take on the The Art Law Blog here and Lee Rosenbaum's on CultureGrrl here.