Fisk University’s proposed sale of a priceless Georgia O’Keeffe painting at a fire-sale price, was blocked today by the Tennessee Attorney General, who said the sale would be “an artistic and financial loss for Fisk and would detract from the rich cultural environment of this community.”

Attorney General Robert E. Cooper Jr. blocked a deal in which Fisk would get $7 million for a prized O’Keeffe painting, that could fetch three times that amount on the open market, from the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which would then free the school to sell other works it had been given by the late O’Keeffe.

“It seems more appropriate to seek greater resolution of the legal issues from the Court and to determine the degree of flexibility that Fisk can exercise in its stewardship of the Stieglitz Collection than to approve a one-sided settlement,” Cooper wrote in a three-page letter to lawyers for Fisk, in Nashville, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe.

Fisk had no immediate comment on the attorney general’s ruling.

 A July 18 hearing in the Chancery Court of Nashville has been set to hear a request from Fisk for a declaratory judgment that Fisk is the sole owner and can do what it wants with the O’Keeffe painting, the most valuable of the 101 pieces in the Stieglitz Collection.

The O’Keeffe Museum has challenged Fisk’s claims in court, asserting the school is barred from selling any parts of the collection by covenants agreed to in the 1940s when the late Ms. O’Keeffe donated the collection to the school.

The museum agreed this winter to drop its challenge and free Fisk to sell any part of the collection it wanted, except the O’Keeffe painting. In exchange for dropping its legal challenge and giving Fisk $ 7 million over time, the museum would get that painting -- “Radiator Building – Night, New York.”

Fisk officials have been criticized by art scholars for trying to unload the key parts of the  Stieglitz Collection. When details of its deal with the O’Keeffe Museum became public, criticism grew louder because the sale price was so low. Still, no local or state officials or civic leaders in Tennessee came forth with a plan to block the deal and save the collection for Fisk and the city.