Each year for 13 years, Blanche Galey Alexander donated a few inches of a massive walnut table to the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Blanche Galey Alexander with the George Nakashima dining room table she donated to the Carnegie Museum of Art. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Fractional donations require close look at law

Designed for her former home atop Laurel Mountain in Somerset, the table was made by George Nakashima, the Japanese-American furniture designer. Last year, the Carnegie Museum of Art became the sole owner of the table, which is worth more than $100,000. Five feet wide and 12 feet long, it is one of the largest tables the architect-turned-furniture maker produced before his death in 1990.

"The museum only got an inch of the table for years. I think it was amusing to the board. I wanted to hold onto the table for a while," said Alexander, who finally turned over the table to the museum last week.

The gift is an example of "fractional giving," which allows donors to reap write-offs while gradually giving small percentages of paintings and other art objects to a museum, which eventually takes ownership of the artwork. Alexander, for example, turned over the table to the museum last year.

As Alexander stood in a Carnegie Museum of Art gallery last week, her fingers gently traced the golden strips of wood, known as butterflies, that hold the table together.

"See how that is cut so perfectly? I think he's the Chippendale of my day," she said.

Even the most casual observer can see that Nakashima revered nature and used wood as a medium for making a sculptural table.

"That's probably the finest example of his work," said Sam Berkovitz, owner of Concept Art Gallery in Edgewood.

"The market places an enormous value on the person who originates a genre. He generally is credited with inventing and developing this modern, organic furniture style with a Japanese aesthetic."

Since the federal tax law changed in 1969, institutions such as Carnegie Museum of Art can benefit enormously from fractional giving. And donors like it because they can spread their tax write-offs over a longer period of time while also continuing to enjoy the artwork. The museum and donor sign an agreement called a deed of gift.

Alex Rosenberg, a Manhattan-based appraiser, said, "Gifting in this way is very advantageous because you don't have to turn it over to the institution at the time you make the gift. You only have to share it with them."

Museums in large metropolitan areas are seeing their collections expand because of such arrangements.

Madeleine Grynsztejn , senior curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and curator for the 1999-2000 Carnegie International, said Kent and Vicki Logan, a couple who collect contemporary art, "have been extraordinarily generous to us with more than 250 works of art as fractional and promised gifts."

While the Logans benefit from the tax deductions, Grynsztejn said, "We grow our collection overnight. With every fractional gift that we're given, we can use our own hard-earned dollars to enhance the collection elsewhere."

Only just begun

Richard Armstrong, the Henry J. Heinz II director of the Carnegie Museum of Art, said fractional giving is a "relatively limited, recent phenomenon in Pittsburgh," and that Alexander was among the first to donate in this manner. Other donors, Armstrong said, are planning to do the same, but he declined to say how many.

Sometimes, art dealers encourage fractional giving. During the busy sellers' market of the 1990s, Armstrong said, dealers often told potential buyers, "I'm selling it to you on the condition that you make a fractional gift to a museum."

That's because, Armstrong added, "every serious artist who's had a lasting career is hopeful of there being a well maintained repository for his or her output."

Several years ago, a Westmoreland County physician who asked that his name not be used, began buying contemporary art and giving percentages of his purchases to the Carnegie Museum of Art.

"Triassic Jurassic" by the American artist Joe Zucker, one of the doctor's recent purchases, is a fractional donation already on display at Carnegie Museum of Art. Part of the motivation for acquiring it, Armstrong said, is that the natural history museum is physically connected to the art museum.

"It's a heroic-scale painting about scientific fact, but this is mostly fiction," Armstrong said.

Before making purchases, the doctor often consults Armstrong and Berkovitz.

"Richard knows what he needs for the museum," the doctor said......Another fractional gift from the doctor is a work by Wayne Thiebaud, a California artist whose work "Table Setting" hangs in the doctor's Westmoreland County home. Some of Thiebaud's works can command prices of $1 million or more.

The physician also plans to fractionally donate "Red Tree" by Roy Lichtenstein, "Seasons Turning," by Samuel Rosenberg, and "Untitled B" by Al Held. All of those works hang in his Westmoreland County home.

A mutual benefit

"Pittsburgh is viable as a city because of its arts," said the doctor. "I have to buy within what I can afford and what the museum is able to use. I want to do what I can for the museum. I'm hoping that it will spur other people to give to the Carnegie.

"Why not give it to an institution that improves the city? The arts are really what keep us human and humane."

And fractional giving is an incentive to like-minded donors.

"You can only deduct a certain percentage of your gross income annually," Berkovitz said. "People who buy or inherit luxury items that appreciate in value use this to obtain a tax advantage. If you have a Willem De Kooning drawing worth $150,000, capital gains tax would be 30 percent on luxury property. This is a means for wealthy individuals to do pretty sophisticated estate planning."

While artwork can decrease in value, donors often benefit because their gift must be revalued each year.

As an example, Berkovitz cited a hypothetical donor who owned a De Kooning drawing in the year 2000 that was appraised at $90,000. If the donor gave 10 percent of the work to a museum, the value of the gift that year was $9,000. If the drawing appreciates and this year is worth $150,000, a 10 percent gift of the work would amount to $15,000.

That's why, Berkovitz said, "Over the last 10 years, it has worked well to the advantage of donors."

Museum directors and appraisers are well aware of the rules that govern such arrangements.

In the art market, Rosenberg said, "Good paintings basically go up. When we're speaking of museum-quality art, it does go up."

If a donor gives a painting worth $1 million outright, the individual will not be able to write the gift off in just one year.

"So, the IRS allows me five years in which to use up the write-off. If I haven't used it at the end of five years, I lose it," Rosenberg explained.

When you give a piece of art outright, Rosenberg said, "the disadvantage is that you have to give it up at once and you only have five years in which to write it off, whereas in the other method, each time you give a 10th, you also have five years" to write off that portion of the donation.

Not just a table

Berkovitz describes the Carnegie Museum of Art's newly acquired Nakashima table as "the embodiment of his whole aesthetic -- the character of the wood, the grain and the way the butterflies are attached, the kind of asymmetrical, organic organization of the table. It's as interesting as any sculpture, but it's a table."

The fractional arrangement allowed Alexander to enjoy it for decades. When it was made, the table symbolized a kind of rebirth.

In September 1958, a faulty thermostat caused a fire that destroyed Galecrest, the home atop Laurel Mountain that Alexander shared with her first husband, John.

The couple decided to rebuild and, while visiting a friend in Eastern Pennsylvania, tried to arrange a meeting with Nakashima at his studio in New Hope.

Over the telephone, the designer sounded stern and wanted to know why the couple wished to see him.

"I was almost in tears," Alexander recalled, adding that she told Nakashima their home had burned and she wanted to start over with one piece of his furniture.

"I'll see you in 20 minutes," the architect-turned-furniture-designer replied.

Alexander was so excited about meeting Nakashima that she did not see a sign that asked guests to remove their shoes. Instead, she tiptoed across the cherry floors in the designer's home and down into his basement, where he kept a large collection of flitches, which are large tree logs about to be cut into veneers.

"He had whole trees in his basement -- trees from India, China and Japan."

As the couple left Nakashima's home, Mrs. Alexander noticed the sign for the first time.

"I was scared to death he wasn't going to do any work for us," she said, because she had failed to remove her high heels.

For decades, the table served as the centerpiece of a 31 feet square living room in Galecrest.

Last year, Alexander moved to Ligonier with her second husband, James Alexander, the retired Post-Gazette book editor. The couple's current home includes a Nakashima table that seats eight people.

But the table at the museum accommodated 18 guests.

"I don't know of another house that that table would fit in," Alexander said.