By Lisa Cornwell

Associated Press Writer

CINCINNATI, OHIO (AP) — Paintings now valued at about $6 million that once hung in schools across the city and were originally purchased with the help of schoolchildren’s donated pennies will be displayed at the Cincinnati Art Museum.

The 90 paintings from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries include works by several artists, including Henry Farny, Frank Duveneck and Joseph Henry Sharp, who had close ties to Cincinnati. The paintings were purchased for the schools by The Art League of Cincinnati, a private organization that made some of the purchases with money collected by Cincinnati Public Schools students beginning about 1903.

The school board entered an agreement in 1991 with the organizations that helped found the Cincinnati Museum Center to house the paintings for 20 years, and the paintings have been and will continue to be displayed at the museum center. But the center, the school district and the Art Museum now have reached an agreement for the art museum to share in maintaining, storing and displaying the paintings.

“This will allow the public to have additional opportunities to enjoy this collection and learn from it,’’ Julie Aronson, the art museum’s curator of American painting and sculpture, said.

The museum center also welcomes the opportunity for more people to see the paintings, said Douglass McDonald, president and chief executive of the center.

By the 1970s, the paintings’ increasing value had led school officials to remove them from school buildings, but some were damaged, stolen or sold before the school board entered the agreement with the museum center in effort to preserve the 90 that remained.

The new agreement extends for 20 years and is renewable in ten-year increments, but the district has no plans to give the paintings to either museum or to sell them, schools spokeswoman Christine Wolff said.

“Cincinnati Public Schools owns the collection, but the paintings are valuable assets that need to be where they can be seen by the public and preserved,’’ Wolff said.

Aronson said the paintings include a variety of types, including landscapes, portraits, paintings of American Indian life and still life paintings. The Art League’s efforts to introduce more art into the city’s schools was part of a wider nationwide movement to combine art and education in the early Twentieth Century, she said.

“Art was considered to be an essential part of a child’s education, and for many children this was their first exposure to art,’’ Aronson said. “Also, many of the paintings were of far-off places, so it was almost like taking a travel adventure when they saw these paintings in their schools.’’

Aronson said the collection brings back memories for many longtime Cincinnati residents.

“Some people still remember the paintings being in their schools and classrooms, and I think they mean a lot to people who have those personal memories,’’ she said.