After months of jousting over control of the city’s arts office and arts programming, the Bowser administration and the newly independent Commission on Arts and Humanities have come to an agreement over one aspect of their dispute: the city’s art holdings.

Kay Kendall, the arts commission Board Chair, and John Falcicchio, the Interim Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, have signed a memorandum of understanding, obtained by WAMU, about who can access the Art Bank, a vault of city-owned public art controlled by the D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities.

The memo, dated Nov. 15, states that both Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office and the commission have a “common purpose” of commissioning and preserving works of art to benefit D.C. residents and “shall endeavor to work cooperatively to advance these common goals.”

It also includes a first-of-its-kind agreement by Kendall to deliver an inventory of the Art Bank and any other public works of art controlled by the commission to Falcicchio and the D.C. Council by July 1.

Perhaps most significantly, it grants the mayor and her designees access to the Art Bank and notes that the commission “shall not unreasonably withhold access to works of art for display.”

This statement can be read as something of a cease-fire between the Mayor’s office and the commission. In September, Bowser’s office locked arts commission staff out of the Art Bank. The following month, the D.C. Attorney General’s office issued a memorandum stating that the move was illegal and that the mayor “no longer has day to day supervisory authority over the [Commission on Arts and Humanities] functions.”

Why do the city’s leaders need this level of clarity about who gets access to the Art Bank, one might wonder? The structure of the city’s arts offices has been up in the air ever since the D.C. Council voted to make the arts commission into an independent agency earlier this year. The office oversees the city’s grants program for artists and arts organizations, manages public art projects and works closely with the city’s creative class.

Becoming independent means a mayoral appointee no longer heads the commission. Before independence the commission’s head reported to the Deputy Mayor of Planning and Economic Development, but that is no longer the case. Bowser still can appoint and remove commission board members, but she cannot intercede with the agency’s day-to-day business.

The change has led to heightened tensions between city leaders. That includes D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson and the mayor herself. The two even had a confrontational phone call in September in which, according to Mendelson, Bowser threatened to replace the arts commission’s entire board.

Mendelson sees the memorandum as “a resolution” to the Art Bank debate. He said it grants Bowser the same rights to the Art Bank as the D.C. Council, while leaving the commission in control. “I can appreciate that folks often want to spin things,” he told WAMU Thursday afternoon, “but having ‘reasonable access’ is the same as what the Council has and all agencies of the government have.”

Falcicchio sees it differently. “Fight finished,” he wrote in a direct message to WAMU. He followed: “We were able to find common ground on accountability and transparency regarding the art collection, and we will continue to work together to find ways to promote our thriving creative economy and the artists & creatives that contribute to it,” he soon followed.

WAMU has also reached out Kendall for comment.

Bowser also created her own arts office in late August. The Creative Affairs Office is headed by Angie Gates, a close Bowser ally and the Director of the Office of Cable Television, Film, Music and Entertainment (OCTFME), as well as the former interim director of the arts commission. (Yes, the city’s arts world is a tangled web.)

On Tuesday, the same day the memorandum of understanding about the Art Bank became public, Bowser nominated Cora Masters Barry, the widow of D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, and cultural scholar Natalie Hopkinson to the arts commission’s board.

Barry is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Recreation Wish List Committee, a nonprofit she founded in 1995 to spearhead the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center in Ward 8. Her late husband served as the mayor of D.C. from 1979 to 1991 and again from 1995 to 1999.

Hopkinson is an assistant professor at Howard University and a leader in the #DontMuteDC movement.

Bowser also nominated five current board members for an additional term: Rhona Friedman, Alma Hardy Gates, MaryAnn Miller, Jose Ucles and Cicie Sattarnlisskorn.

The D.C. Council will need to approve these nominations. Mendelson said he currently sees no reason to vote against any of the nominations.