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OCALA - Anybody want a museum?
The Florida State University Foundation wants out of its agreement to maintain the Appleton Museum of Art here, but an Ocala court ruling prohibits the foundation from walking away. Its lawyers might appeal.
The Appleton is an important part of the cultural scene in Marion County, where millionaires live like royalty on beautiful horse farms and actor John Travolta keeps a home in a neighborhood with its own runway.
Hidden behind a thick tree line off State Road 40, not far from Lowe's and Wal-Mart and the housing developments that never stop sprouting, the Appleton provides another window on the world.
The permanent collections include pre-Columbian, African, Asian and Islamic art and European paintings. Works from Florida's Highwaymen are on display. The museum offers lectures, film series, even summer day camps for budding painters and sculptors.
Now Arthur Appleton and his family are fighting to save his museum.
His lawyers describe Appleton as a bedridden 89-year-old Alzheimer's patient. But in his younger days, he had two passions: raising thoroughbreds at a 900-acre horse farm called Bridlewood and collecting art.
By 1990, he had accumulated enough art to fill a museum.
Appleton built the museum, stocked it with the cream of his personal collection and looked for a university to run the place.
He first approached the University of Florida in nearby Gainesville, but it had plans to build its own museum and declined.
Then Appleton approached the Florida State University Foundation. The foundation, a support organization that accepts and distributes gifts given to the school, accepted the gift, which includes the building and was valued at $42-million. It agreed to pay the museum's operating expenses "in perpetuity."
Things were fine until 2003. Hobbled by legislative budget cuts, FSU decided the $1.6-million annual cost to run the museum was no longer feasible. It wanted out of the agreement, effective Thursday.
The Legislature this spring provided a temporary fix, agreeing to pay the Appleton's operating expenses through next June.
But that didn't satisfy the Appleton camp. The family wants Arthur Appleton's dream - to share his art collection with many generations under the stewardship of a major university - carried out.
The foundation agreed to do that, and the Appletons want it to follow through. They sued for breach of contract.
"FSU doesn't have the option of just walking away," said Peter King, an attorney for the Appleton family. "FSU had plenty of lawyers looking over the agreement. They understood that funding from the state might not be available."
Marion County is known for its horse farms and the Silver Springs attraction, a theme park where guests ride in glass-bottomed boats and admire fish, turtles and gators. Ocala is a popular place for Interstate 75 drivers to exit in search of food or a hotel room.
But drive into town, and Ocala resembles most other midsize Florida cities undergoing a population and construction boom. There is no sports arena, although UF is about a half-hour drive north. It has only a medium-sized airport. It's perhaps not the kind of place one would expect to find a top quality art museum.
But there sits the Appleton.
A mixture of skylights and soft electric light dramatically illuminates each piece. Sculptures atop pedestals and wall displays move Appleton visitors through the world of fine art.
In 2001, the Appleton scored a major coup with "Once in Our Lifetime," a major exhibit of paintings by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and other important artists.
The exhibit proved to be a major success, drawing 14,000 visitors, said Appleton director Jim Rosengren.
He said the buzz about the collection ranked the Appleton among the top regional art museums.
The Appleton certainly seemed on an upward path. Then FSU dropped its bombshell.
The Appleton's 30 staffers were notified that after today, the last day of the state's fiscal year, they would become ex-staffers. FSU president T.K. Wetherell also sent a letter to Appleton stating the school was walking away from the agreement.
Incensed, the Appletons headed for the courthouse. The Legislature's subsequent appropriation, which might or might not be renewed in the future, wasn't nearly enough to stop them.
The breach of contract suit will take time to litigate. So the Appleton camp asked a Marion County circuit judge to issue an injunction forcing the FSU Foundation to continue funding operations beyond today.
The lawyers squared off last week, and the FSU Foundation's defense went something like this:
The foundation, not the university, signed the agreement with Appleton. The foundation met its responsibility to manage the museum "in perpetuity," as required in the agreement, by leasing it to the FSU School of Visual Arts and Dance.
What happened afterward was out of the foundation's control.
If the Appletons had a grievance, the foundation's lawyer argued, it was with the university, not the foundation.
FSU's team proposed a harsh solution: While the legal battle rages, close the Appleton and pay for a skeleton security staff and electricity so the air conditioner could keep the art safe from Florida's humidity.
Rosengren said closing the doors, even temporarily, would cause irreparable harm to the museum and damage the area's credibility.
"It's a reflection on a community, a sensibility of how its treats art and culture," Rosengren said.
FSU lawyers also questioned Appleton's mental capacity. There was also an implication that he committed fraud by inflating the value of the art collection by millions of dollars.
"How dare they (FSU) treat a man who has given them millions and millions of dollars that way?" fumed King, the Appletons' attorney.
School officials also said they could return the museum to Appleton.
"What does the FSU Foundation believe he can do with it?" King asked. "He's in no position to do anything with this gift."
Wetherell's office declined to comment on the issue Tuesday.
Circuit Judge Jack Singbush didn't buy the FSU team's argument. He granted the injunction, finding that the foundation could not escape its obligations, regardless of whether FSU held up its end of the bargain.
He also implied that the defense team was splitting hairs by saying that the foundation was that much different than the university.
"This was a victory for people who believe in assuring that tenants of an agreement are upheld," Rosengren said.
"The real meat of the matter is that we have this charge. ... These works are held in trust, and this is an educational facility," he said. "To have battled through everything and returned with our good name - well, let's just hope that it's a hiccup in the overall."
- Jorge Sanchez can be reached at 352 860-7313 or at sanchez@sptimes.com