President E. Gordon Gee participated in an entertaining arm-wrestling stunt last month over a painting that years ago provoked an acrimonious battle between Ohio State and a Columbus art dealer.
The oil painting, “Children at the Beach” by Columbus artist Alice Schille, was a gift from the freshman class of 1911. Until 1997 the painting hung in the old Ohio Union, where Columbus art dealer Lynda Dickson saw it.
In June 1999, OSU sold the painting to Dickson for $50,000 based on a 13-year-old appraisal that noted that the piece was a gift from the freshman class of 1911.
Dickson, now 73, was a member of the Presidents Club, which honors OSU donors who give gifts of $2,500 or more.
Dickson’s letter from the Presidents Club states that she donated
$4,000 to the university before her acceptance to the club in October 1998. Dickson donated one print from her art collection to President Gee and nine to Dodd Hall, where she was treated for a brain injury in 1997.
When Dickson saw Schille’s “Children at the Beach” at the Ohio Union, it was hanging in a “poorly lit area,” was unclean and had surface flaws, including a minor tear, Dickson said. Despite its condition, she said she “just loved the children” in the painting.
Dickson made a request to buy the painting at the Finance Office of the Ohio Union. In August 1997, associate director of the Ohio Union, Franklin Gencur, wrote to Dickson asking if she was still interested in purchasing the painting.
Dickson sent OSU a $1,000 check as a down payment and asked that the work be appraised. She later received a copy of an appraisal of $30,000 from OSU. The document was from 1986.
Dickson made an offer of $50,000 for the painting. The sale was arranged over the next two years and in June 1999, OSU finally sold it to Dickson.
In August 1999 Dickson purchased the copyrights to the painting from Schille’s family for $5,000.
She placed ads for prints of the painting in the New York Times. The ads stated that the painting was previously owned by OSU.
“A number of OSU alumni saw that ad … and were absolutely livid that OSU had sold the painting. And because they were angry, I was supposed to just give it back,” Dickson said.
Legal Affairs offered to buy the painting back for the price she bought it for, but she refused, she said.
In a Columbus Dispatch story from 2000 about the sale of the painting, OSU spokesman David Ferguson said, “No one knew it was a class gift. If people would have been aware it was a class gift, no one would have sold the darn thing.”
The appraisal Dickson received from OSU stated that “This work was given by the Freshman class of 1911 to the Ohio State University for display in the old Ohio Union.”
Dickson said OSU’s general counsel at the time, Virginia Trethewey, “verbally attacked” her over the phone after she refused to return the painting.
“She called here threatening me that if I didn’t give her the painting back, I wouldn’t be able to show my face here in Columbus,” Dickson said.
Trethewey refused to comment.
“Trethewey declined comment citing attorney-client privilege,” said Steve Proctor, vice president of communications and advocacy at the Ohio State University Alumni Association, where Trethewey is now chief operating officer.
Dickson refused to give the painting back after Trethewey’s call. She hired an attorney to represent her in the battle with OSU and paid more than $5,000 in legal fees, documents show.
“I had decided that I wasn’t going to sell the painting unless I made a good profit on it,” Dickson said.
When the media found out about the controversy in 2000, questions were raised about who approved the sale of a class gift and where Dickson’s $50,000 went.
An article in the Columbus Dispatch stated, “The money was deposited into Ohio State’s student-affairs account Aug. 6, according to a university deposit record.”
When the Lantern tried to confirm this statement with Dave Wiseley, associate director of the Ohio Union, he said, “As this event occurred in 1999 [if the date below is accurate], we would not have any paper financial records due to compliance with the General Records Retention Schedule.”
In response to questions about employees involved in the painting’s sale, Liz Cook, assistant director of OSU Media Relations, wrote in an e-mail, “These events transpired long ago and largely involved individuals who no longer work for Ohio State.”
In late 1999, Dickson sold the painting to Carolyn Schmidt, an OSU employee, for $115,000. The sale price was based on a $150,000 appraisal from John Bobb, an art appraiser and Schille’s great-great nephew.
The painting was donated back to the university shortly thereafter.
Dickson did not know that Schmidt was planning to donate the painting back to OSU when she arranged the sale, she said.
Dickson’s bargain purchase and profit from the sale drew media attention. She thought the stories in the media portrayed her sale in “a very negative light.”
“It was presented as though me, with one year of college, went and somehow committed a fraud against a university with people with all kinds of law degrees and doctorates,” Dickson said.
“When I bought a painting that I was asked to buy and then made a profit on it, I was entitled to make a profit on that painting,” she said.
Dickson said she used her profit to pay for the education of her granddaughter, who is also her adopted daughter.
“I was just a grandmother trying to provide for my grandchild,” she said.
Dickson, who manages LME Gallery, has had a loss of business every year since the articles were published, she said.
“To continue this beating up and ridiculing me for buying a painting makes OSU and the people involved the most pathetic people on earth,” she said.
When the university reacquired the painting, it was put into a storage vault at the Wexner Center during the construction of the new Ohio Union, Cook said.
The painting later hung in Gee’s university residence, until it was placed in the new Union after the arm-wrestling stunt between Gee and the director of the Union, Tracy Stuck.
“The President’s office visited [the Wexner Center] and selected a few pieces to have placed in the University Residence [University property],” Cook said of the painting’s stay at Gee’s residence.
In last month’s arm-wrestling match, Gee won the first round, Stuck won the second, and the third was a draw. Gee decided the painting should hang in the Union.
Dickson still has copyrights to “Children at the Beach,” which now hangs outside the south entrance to the Archie M. Griffin Grand Ballroom in the Ohio Union.
