Court grants more time to opponents of artwork sale

Opponents of the controversial sale of four Randolph College paintings made progress on two fronts Monday: They paid half the bill required to halt the sale, and they secured a new deadline to raise the rest of the money, just hours before the original deadline would have expired.

On Monday, opponents of the sale filed $500,000 toward the $1 million bond, according to the Lynchburg Circuit Court Clerk's office.

The Virginia Supreme Court on Monday granted a request filed Friday to extend past Monday the deadline for paying the remaining $500,000, according to court documents.

"There just hasn't been sufficient time," said Anne Yastremski, executive director of Preserve Educational Choice, a nonprofit organization paying for litigation.

Since opponents to the sale were able to raise $500,000 in about two weeks, she said, she was confident the group could raise another $500,000 in two-and-a-half months.

"We're very grateful for the extra time," Yastremski said.

Opponents of the sale asked that the court consider lowering the required total bond to $500,000 or extending the deadline from Monday until March 31.

The college filed a response in opposition to that request.
The court decided to keep the bond requirement at $1 million but to allow half of that to be posted Monday and the other half by Feb. 15, according to court documents. Justice G. Steven Agee dissented.

If filed in full, the bond would temporarily prevent Randolph College from "selling, assigning, transferring or otherwise disposing of" the paintings, before six months from Nov. 10, the higher court's decision states.

If the bond is not posted by the new deadline, the temporary injunction would "automatically dissolve," the decision states.
The four paintings - George Bellows' "Men of the Docks," Edward Hicks' A "Peaceable Kingdom," Ernest Hennings' "Through the Arroyo" and Rufino Tamayo's "Troubador" - were originally slated for sale this month in two auctions from New York-based Christie's.

They were expected to raise at least $32 million, which college officials have said is needed to boost its $153 million endowment and lower its spending rate from endowment.

Last year, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Randolph's accrediting organization, placed the former Randolph-Macon Woman's College on warning for spending from its endowment at an unsustainable rate.

Next week, SACS will decide whether to keep the school on warning, remove the warning, place the school on probation or remove accreditation.

In a statement released Monday, Randolph College spokeswoman Brenda Edson said that the college will continue making decisions necessary to secure the school's long-term future.

"The college is confident that it will prevail when the merits of plaintiffs' claims are ultimately judged," she said in the statement, referring to other ongoing litigation that likely will go before the Virginia Supreme Court in the spring. "Nothing in today's decision impacts in any way how this litigation will ultimately end."

The college has no immediate plans to sell or share the artwork before the conclusion of that litigation, she said in a phone interview Monday. But the college will keep looking into its options for any future decisions, she said.

"The need to sell or do something with the artwork doesn't go away," she said.

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