L.A. Art Museum to Get $23.5 Million in Suit Over Christian Science Book

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge Wednesday approved the settlement of a legal dispute involving Christian Science literature in which about $23.5 million will be awarded to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

According to terms of the agreement, officials of the Boston-based First Church of Christ, Science; LACMA and Stanford University will divide the contested bequests of about $100 million from the families of Bliss Knapp and his wife, Eloise Mabury Knapp. The church will receive 53% of the trusts’ assets; the museum and the university each will receive 23.5%.

The settlement ends a longstanding dispute over Bliss Knapp’s 1945 biography of the church’s founder, Mary Baker Eddy. Church officials refused to publish the book for more than four decades on grounds that Knapp’s work contradicts church doctrine, but they relented when Knapp and his wife left the church a fortune, contingent upon publication of the biography as “authorized” church literature and distribution to “substantially all” Christian Science reading rooms worldwide.

If the church did not comply, the money was to be divided between the museum and the university. The book was published in 1991, but LACMA and Stanford filed suit, charging that disclaimers issued with the book and incomplete distribution violated terms of the wills.