wfn.org | Negotiators Work to Settle Dispute Over Georgia O'Keeffe Property

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13-August-1998 
98266 
 
    Negotiators Work to Settle Dispute 
    Over Georgia O'Keeffe Property 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.-Negotiators are working to settle out of court a property 
dispute that has unclear implications for programming at the denomination's 
Ghost Ranch Conference Center near Abiquiu, N.M., and for art 
preservationists in Santa Fe. 
 
    Even though the Executive Committee of the General Assembly Council has 
authorized borrowing $3 million to buy the disputed 12-acre tract of land 
and adobe house once owned by artist Georgia O'Keeffe, the five-person 
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) negotiating team is continuing to discuss 
alternatives with the property's current owner and another prospective 
buyer. 
 
    The negotiators are Paul Biderman of Santa Fe, chair of the Ghost Ranch 
Governing Board; the Rev. Ed Craxton, associate director for Christian 
education, Congregational Ministries Division; the Rev. John McFayden of 
Arlington Heights, Ill., chair of the Congregational Ministries Division 
Committee; Gene Shannon of Bradenton, Fla., vice chair of the Mission 
Support Services Committee; and Diane Wheeler of Palmyra, N.Y., a member of 
the Executive Committee. 
 
    The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) filed suit in New Mexico July 31 to 
stop the current property owner from selling the land to the founders of 
the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and Study Center in nearby Santa Fe.  The 
O'Keeffe property is within the boundaries of the denomination's 
21,000-acre desert conference center. The prospective buyers  - John and 
Anne Marion - finance their philanthropic work through The Burnett 
Foundation, a family enterprise headquartered in Forth Worth, Texas. 
 
     In exchange for the purchase of four acres of the disputed 12 in 1987, 
the owner, Juan Hamilton, O'Keeffe's former associate, signed a 
right-of-first-refusal agreement with the denomination that could be 
exercised if the 12-acre tract ever were to be sold.  The foundation 
offered $3 million for the property and reportedly offered the denomination 
$250,000 to waive its first-refusal rights.  The offer to the church was 
declined. 
 
    Preservation of Ghost Ranch itself and access to the O'Keeffe property 
are the primary points of contention. The only road to the residence cuts 
through the middle of the conference center's program area.  However, some 
believe that buying the O'Keeffe property may be a way to attract new 
donors to the conference center, which is just pulling out of financial 
hard times. 
 
    The five-person PC(USA) team is examining counterproposals from 
Hamilton and the foundation that may preclude the church buying the 
property outright, though a loan from the Presbyterian Investment & Loan 
Corporation (PILP) has been secured so that it can do so if necessary. 
Earnest money in the amount of $100,000 has also been put down. 
 
    An Executive Committee spokesperson said the negotiations may produce 
one of several possible outcomes: The denomination could buy the property 
and control its use and/or lease it to another entity. Or it could consent 
to another buyer controlling the property under conditions that preserve 
Ghost Ranch's programmatic activity while, perhaps, allowing the conference 
center limited access to the site for its educational program. 
 
    One of several former O'Keeffe residences in New Mexico, the now 
fragile adobe house at Ghost Ranch includes the studio where O'Keeffe 
painted some of her most famous landscapes of New Mexico's buttes and 
mesas.  It is appraised at $735,000 and reportedly will require massive 
repairs before it can be used by scholars, artists, tourists or students. 
 
    "It's a 12-acre island in the middle of 21,000 acres,"  said the Rev. 
Richard Ferguson, interim director of the PC(USA)'s Congregational 
Ministries Division, "and it's not too far from our program office and 
facilities."  He said denominational officials were informed of the bid 
during the General Assembly and had 30 days to respond before the 
right-of-first-refusal agreement was void - despite the complicated 
committee process required for church decision-making. 
 
    "There's frustration," he said, describing the hurried legal scramble 
to ensure more negotiating time. "But the driving feature ... is a desire 
to preserve our property. ..." 
 
    How the property ought to be preserved, by whom and how to pay for it 
are the crux of the negotiations under way now. 
 
     There's no shortage of opinion.  There are Presbyterians opposed to a 
bidding war with the wealthy. (According to a 1997 article in the 
"Albuquerque Tribune," Anne Marion is heir to the Radio Shack fortune, and 
her husband - like his father before him - is a retired president of 
Sotheby's auction house in New York.)  There are Santa Feans who resent 
outsiders buying up property at prices longtime locals are unable to match. 
Then there's the grumbling within the Southwestern artistic community about 
what might be the less-than-heavenly possibilities of a deal between art 
preservationists and the church. Further, there are Presbyterians who 
fervently believe that O'Keeffe - despite changes in her will - intended 
that the residence be left to Ghost Ranch. 
 
    In late July, the "Santa Fe New Mexican" said that the Marions intend 
to restrict use of the home to scholars studying O'Keeffe's life and work 
and were surprised that the denomination might be willing to invest in 
necessary restoration work.  A spokesperson was unavailable for further 
comment when the Presbyterian News Service contacted the foundation Aug. 
12. 
 
    The denomination has been more vague about its intentions, though Ghost 
Ranch acting director Tom Guiles said the center already offers a 
half-dozen programs each year that focus on aspects of O'Keeffe's art. 
Describing the thinking of some, Guiles said that expanding the programming 
might open up a new donor base to help pay back the $3 million that the 
Executive Committee wants repaid to PILP by next year. 
 
      "Some think this is just ridiculous - that we are out of our minds to 
consider such an absurd idea," said Guiles.  "Others say, `Ya gotta be 
crazy to let that [property] go.'" 
 
    "Why do it?  Why not do it?  It's gonna be a difficult question either 
way," Guiles told the Presbyterian News Service. 
 
    Elizabeth Glassman of Santa Fe, the president of the Georgia O'Keeffe 
Foundation, which is separate from the Marions' museum, told the 
Presbyterian News Service that restoring and opening an historic home is an 
intricate process. Not to mention the expense, she said. There are 
questions about responsible tourism and about maintaining respect for 
O'Keeffe's life and legacy.  The latter includes a deep commitment to 
privacy and solitude.  The foundation restored O'Keeffe's Abiquiu home, and 
it is now a National Historic Landmark with limited access by tourists. 
 
    "An historic home," Glassman said, "is a complicated and expensive 
affair - especially a fragile adobe structure ... Those fragile mud floors 
wear quite quickly." 
 
    But perhaps what wears most on Presbyterians is the risk that goes with 
taking on more debt and more maintenance at Ghost Ranch, a facility that 
has been unable to afford major renovations.  This year the Ghost Ranch 
Governing Board reduced staff by four, froze some salaries and drew once 
again on an endowment to cover operating shortfalls.  No money, however, is 
budgeted from the endowment - the Driscoll Fund - this year, and conference 
center operations remain within the proposed budget.  No deficit is 
anticipated, according to the GAC. 
 
    "There's not an easy answer for that," said Guiles, adding that Ghost 
Ranch is rebuilding its financial base and that funding to buy and restore 
the O'Keeffe property would have to come from a new list of donors 
interested in perpetuating O'Keeffe's legacy.  "[The dispute may] open up a 
new donor base.  This is not $3 million being taken away from the 
operations of the ranch. 
 
    "It is going to be a loan ... separate and apart from operations," 
Guiles said. 
 
    GAC chair the Rev. Cathy Chisholm is adamant that the church "did not 
initiate the action to purchase the property, nor set its price.  Under the 
terms of our first-refusal right, we were required to match the price that 
was offered by The Burnett Foundation.  As in any property sale, the value 
of the property is what a buyer is willing to pay for it, which may be more 
than its appraised value. 
 
    "Because this property was owned by a well-known figure, a `celebrity 
appraisal' could set its value at a much higher figure," Chisholm said. 
"As yet no celebrity appraisal has been done on the O'Keeffe property." 
Chisholm added that the purchase price might be reduced some by the 
appraised value of the two small parcels of land transferred to Hamilton in 
1987 or by removal of some of O'Keeffe's personal effects from the home. 
 
    If donor contributions are inadequate to repay PILP, the Executive 
Committee proposes to sell remote portions of the Ghost Ranch property. 
 
    While Guiles commended the Marions' work creating the O'Keeffe Museum, 
there is uncertainty about what decisions their foundation might make about 
the property years from now. 
 
    "What will [the Foundation] do 20, 30 or 40 years down the road?  Who 
knows?  We kinda know with the church.  It has a 40-year track record 
[here]," Guiles told the Presbyterian News Service.  "It's the not knowing 
- the uncertainty - that's a great big question mark." 
 
    Arthur and Phoebe Pack bequeathed Ghost Ranch to the denomination in 
1955, minus the 7.6 acres they had sold to O'Keeffe in 1940.  When O'Keeffe 
died in 1986, she left the property to Hamilton, her custodian and 
companion and the son of a Presbyterian minister.  In 1987, Hamilton 
purchased the additional four acres from Ghost Ranch, at which time the 
right-of-refusal agreement was made, covering the full 12 acres. 

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