BusinessTN

It's unlikely that any painting has received as much publicity in Tennessee over the last few years as Georgia O'Keeffe's Radiator Building - Night, New York. It all started in 2005, when Nashville's historically black Fisk University sought court permission to sell O'Keeffe's 1927 painting and Marsden Hartley's Painting No. 3--two works from the 101-piece Stieglitz Collection, which O'Keeffe donated to the university in 1949. For Fisk, the motive was clear: a desperate measure to cash in an asset in exchange for much-needed--some said life-sustaining--revenue.

The move would make Fisk the center of attention. Over the next three years, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, two state attorneys general, the Crystal Bridges Museum of Bentonville, Ark., and others would become involved in the legal debate over whether Fisk had the right to sell, share or even fail to display the collection or its pieces.

Though it might seem relevant only to museums and universities, the struggle over the Stieglitz Collection is itself a symptom of Fisk's effort to answer the basic question that every business in Tennessee faces: How to remain solvent, competitive and relevant in a dynamic business climate? To answer that question, Fisk will have to overcome a history plagued with fiscal shortfalls, sporadic leadership and a transformed marketplace.

Past as Prologue

In many ways, Fisk's financial struggles are an integral part of its 142-year history. From its founding in 1866, Fisk, like other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), was underfunded. Even one of its crown jewels, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, was itself a fundraising mechanism. Formed in 1871 to embark on a cross-country singing tour to raise funds for the faltering university, the group also toured Europe, where in 1873 it performed for England's Queen Victoria and secured the money that was used to build Jubilee Hall--the first permanent structure dedicated to the education of African Americans in the South.

"If you look in the history of American higher education, you will find few stories more inspiring than the Fisk story," says William Troutt, president of Rhodes College and former president of Belmont University. (Troutt joined the Fisk Board of Trustees in 2006.)

The Jubilee Singers and the Stieglitz Collection are hardly the only pieces of history of which Fisk can be proud. Fisk boasts among its distinguished graduates NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois, historian John Hope Franklin and poet Nikki Giovanni. Faculty members have included writer James Weldon Johnson and painter Aaron Douglas, both celebrated figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Douglas taught at Fisk for 29 years and established the school's first formal art department. Today, Fisk's special collections and archives include the personal papers of both men, as well as those of such luminaries as Harlem Renaissance poet and novelist Langston Hughes.

But such accolades and laurels only go so far.

"You cannot compete successfully if your principle claim to fame is that you have a glorious history," says Lucius Outlaw, a Fisk alumnus and Vanderbilt University professor who has a reputation for being outspoken about his alma mater's financial situation. "Most young people are not choosing history--they choose institutions that are going to be compelling to them for the present and the future."

Still, Fisk's present and future are anchored in its recent past. In the 1950s, Fisk's fortunes rose along with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1968, the university reached its financial peak, with an endowment of more than $14 million. In 1972, Fisk attained its largest enrollment of about 1,550 students. But ironically, in the success of the Civil Rights Movement lay the seeds of the modern competitive struggle for Fisk and other HBCUs, as those same students for whom an HBCU had long been the only real option for higher education were now being vigorously pursued by the very institutions that once denied them.

With the rise in competition came a flagging of Fisk's fortunes. By 1977, Fisk's endowment had fallen to about $3 million, and by 1983--a year best remembered as the one during which the Nashville Gas Co. turned off the heat because of an unpaid balance of $170,000•the university's overall debt had climbed to a reported $2.8 million.

Narrowly averting a shutdown, Fisk ultimately persevered under the leadership of president Henry Ponder, who began his tenure in July 1984. When Ponder retired in 1996, the university was in the black and reported an endowment of $7.9 million. Though Ponder had his critics, the period does reinforce the importance of steady leadership.

"The longest period of stability was under Henry Ponder, and money was raised to clear up the deficit and stabilize things, but we have never had a major multiyear capital campaign," Outlaw says.