S&P ratings, which are issued to both companies and countries, indicate the degree risk to investors. They span from AAA to D.

The auction house’s revenue has dropped 22 percent on the heels of a new, simplified fee structure that drastically lowered—and standardized—the traditional buyer’s premium, sellers’ fees, and commissions. At the time of the restructured fee announcement, chief executive Charlie Stewart said these are “changes [that] we’ve been contemplating for a long, long time.”

“I think this it’s good to have a fair, and clear, set of terms in the art market. This is kind of a growing-up moment. It’s a step toward maturity for the art world,” Stewart added. Some in the art world, however, considered the restructuring a risky move, since negotiating sellers’ fees is among the most powerful tools in an auction house specialist’s arsenal. For headline-grabbing lots, sellers’ fees are often brought down to zero. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, the price of Sotheby’s bonds has dropped by about 8 percent in the last month, leading to worry among investors that the auction house won’t be able refinance loans that are due in 2026. Prices for bonds due in 2027 have dropped to below 87 cents on the dollar, down from around 93 cents in mid-May.

The auction house’s debt-to-EBITDA ratio, which compares the company’s total debt to its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, and is used as a measure of how easily a company can pay off its debt, increased from 7.7 times to 10 times, indicating higher debt relative to earnings.

Despite a cloudy financial outlook, Sotheby’s paid shareholders $8.5 million in dividends in the first quarter of 2024 and a total of $90 million last year.

S&P has a negative outlook on Sotheby’s rating, meaning it could downgrade the rating further if performance doesn’t improve. Sotheby’s is a private company owned by French telecom entrepreneur Patrick Drahi, who bought the house in 2019 for $2.7 billion.

Sotheby’s did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Steib, who will take on the role of chief executive at the media company Tegna, will remain in an advisory role with Artsy through July and a board member following his departure. 

Yin has also been with the Artsy since 2019. Since joining the company, he has overseen Artsy’s strategy and operations, as well as investments into the company and investor relations. Yin also oversaw the expansion of Artsy’s e-commerce transaction capabilities, which now include 37 countries and three currencies, the dollar, the British pound, and the Euro.

In an email interview with ARTnews, Yin said that he doesn’t foresee any abrupt shifts in Artsy’s business strategy. Rather, his focus will be enhancing current efforts and “supporting our gallery partners, building out our secondary market business, and expanding the reach of artists globally.”

“My approach will bring a renewed focus on a few specific areas,” Yin said. “I have been involved with the business for five years, ensuring a deep understanding of our strategy and operations.”

Yin cited his passion for collecting works by emerging LGBTQ+, AAPI, Californian, French, and Italian artists as being influential to the company’s future path under his leadership. “My personal connection to these communities and regions … drives my commitment to diversity and representation within the art world. This perspective will shape our strategies and initiatives moving forward.”

He moves in to his new role at a time of cautious optimism in the art market, which over the last two years have shown collectors to be more thoughtful about their spending.

“The art market has proven uneven for many over the last year,” Yin said. “However, collectors continue to buy on Artsy and offline, and I am cautiously optimistic about the resilience of the art market because the joy people feel when collecting and appreciating art hasn’t diminished.”

According to the 2024 Global Art Market Report by Art Basel and UBS, online collecting, which began in earnest following the Covid-19 pandemic and was thought by some to be in decline after restrictions eased, has grown significantly in the last years. Per that report, online sales accounted for $11.8 billion last year alone, a 7 percent rise from 2022’s figure.

The seven-foot-wide work seems to have significantly declined in value. When Christie’s brought the work to auction in 2022, that house gave it a $30 million estimate; just before the sale, the work was quietly withdrawn. This time, Sotheby’s has awarded the work a $15 million–$20 million estimate.

Any Basquiat coming to auction is deemed an event, largely due to the phenomenally high prices his work typically commands. Although the recent secondary market prices are still high, Basquiats used to more regularly outpace their high estimates by large sums at auction. The dip in prices could be explained by collectors being more thoughtful about how many millions they are willing to spend at auction, and by auction houses adjusting estimates to better fit those new, high interest rate–driven buying habits.

In May, Basquiat’s Untitled (ELMAR), also from 1982, led a modern and contemporary art sale at Philips, selling for $46.5 million. That painting had been estimated to sell for $60 million. The other two Basquiats sold by the house in evening sales that month—Untitled (Portrait of a Famous Ballplayer), from 1981, and Native Carrying Some Guns, Bibles, Amorites on Safari (1982)—headed to auction at lower values, selling for $7.8 million and $12.6 million, respectively. Those figures, which all include buyer’s premium, were squarely within the works’ estimates.

Christie’s and Sotheby’s, too, had Basquiats for sale in May. An untitled 1984 collaboration between Basquiat and Andy Warhol went to Sotheby’s with an estimate of $15 million to $20 million. It sold for $19.3 million. Meanwhile, yet another 1982 work, The Italian Version of Popeye Has no Pork in His Diet, sold at Christie’s for $32 million on an estimate of around $30 million.

Earlier this year, Phillips’s Americas president Jean-Paul Engelen told Puck’s Marion Maneker that Basquiat was “the new Picasso,” a euphemism for the fact that the artist has now achieved legendary status on the market. According to Maneker, roughly $125 million worth of Basquiat’s work sold in May. Look back to the last four years, and that figure crosses the billion-dollar mark.

There’s no question that Basquiat’s market has juice at the moment, a trend that it likely to continue. The only question is whether Sotheby’s priced the work low enough to get collectors interested. Either way, it doesn’t matter much. The work, according to Sotheby’s website, has a guarantee and an irrevocable bid, which means it has effectively already sold. The question, now, is who’s taking it home.

Ye, who has recently made anti-Semitic statements and praised Hitler, bought the 4,000-square-foot home in Malibu, one of the very few in the United States designed by Ando, for $57.3 million in an off-market deal. Considered architecturally significant, the home had previously belonged to the Wall Street financier Richard Sachs.

Within the art world, the Pritzker Prize–winning architect is specifically known for designing museums, including the Chichu Art Museum in Naoshima, Japan, and the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth in Texas.

Demolition work on the smooth, gray, poured concrete minimalist building was carried out by a day laborer, handyman, and contractor named Tony Saxon. 

Saxon eventually enlisted the help of a small crew when he was asked to strip the house of modern conveniences that most would consider essential: kitchens, bathrooms, and built-in storage. According to Parker, Ye even requested that the floor-to-ceiling windows be removed entirely on the side of the house that faces the Pacific Ocean, and that the house be disconnected from the grid, eliminating access to electricity. 

In the New Yorker story, Saxon described living in the house while working on the project, sleeping on a mattress in what was once the kitchen and dining space. In that same room, Sachs had reportedly once hung a painting by George Condo.

One of the recurring characters in Parker’s story is James Turrell, an artist with whom Ye has collaborated. “We all will live in Turrell spaces,” Ye once tweeted, somehow missing the point that there are only 80 or so of the artist’s “Skyspace” installations in the world. The Parker article included one previously unreported anecdote in which Ye attempted, and failed, to construct a “giant sphere” recalling another Turrell work for a concert on short notice.

Following Ye’s anti-Semitic comments in 2022, he lost his sneaker deal with Adidas, his fashion deal with the Gap, and his status as a billionaire. That year, the house, now gutted, was put back on the market. According to the story, the real estate brokerage the Oppenheim Group handled the listing, using the same images Sachs used to sell the place to Ye. The listing pegged the house’s value at $53 million, just a hair less than Ye paid for it. Earlier this year, Parker writes, the price of the house was lowered to a more realistic $39 million.

Following Ye’s search for radical minimalism, the house is now essentially a three-story concrete shell with oceanfront views. Having been exposed to the elements, the building is now scarred and pockmarked, its once smooth gray concrete “chewed up” and “pitted” by rain and salt, per Parker. The concrete floors are stained where metal railings rusted after exposure to salt air, wind, and water. The ocean-facing side of the house stands completely open after the removal of floor-to-ceiling windows and glass balustrades. 

“Andrew Fabricant and Laura Paulson are no longer with the gallery,” Larry Gagosian said in his email. “At this moment in the gallery’s evolution, we arrived at the point where I decided it was time for us to part ways. We are grateful for their contributions over the past several years and wish them well.”

News of Fabricant and Paulson’s ouster was first reported on Thursday by Bloomberg.

Fabricant first began working with Gagosian in the 1980s. After 15 years there, he left to pursue jobs at other galleries before rejoining Gagosian in 2018. The following year, he was made chief operating officer, overseeing the administrative and operational sides of the business.

In 2022 he joined the flashy board of directors compiled by Gagosian that included members from the real estate, tech, film, and television industries, including Delphine Arnault, executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, who also sits on LVMH’s board of directors and executive committee.

At the time, Larry Gagosian said that his “goal in assembling a Board of Directors was to raise the bar on the gallery’s strategic thinking and vision for the future.” Gagosian, who is now 78, has no known succession plan, and the news spurred some to believe that Fabricant could be an heir to his gallery empire.

This is the second high-profile change at the gallery in the past month. In late May, ARTnews reported that Sotheby’s star specialist Brooke Lampley had left the auction house to join Gagosian in the fall as a senior director.

In an email sent to the gallery’s staff, Gagosian said, “I plan to continue our advisory arm with some changes. I see a lot of potential in the development of that business alongside our core gallery operations and will be sharing more about those plans in the near future.”

As Art Basel enters its public days, Cruse spoke to ARTnews about the challenges of staging such a monumental art fair while the market is in a questionable state and interest rates are high, why Art Basel continues to be successful, and offers the slightest of hints at what might be in store for next year’s edition.

ARTnews: Opening day has come and gone. What can you tell me about the energy on the ground?

Maike Cruse: The energy has been great. You know the art market here in Basel has proven to be very resilient. We were very confident going in, but what we’ve seen so far has really exceeded our expectations, and, I think, also the expectations of many of the galleries. The pace is much more normal, as opposed to last year when little bit more cautious behavior than what’s happening right now.

That’s good to hear. There has been lots of talk about the market softening or losing its froth, euphemisms to say that people aren’t buying as much as even a few months ago. Many people were unsure what to expect, especially with the fair being so close to the May auctions in New York, which had less than stellar results. 

Absolutely. We were all aware of this and, as I said people were nervous going into the show, I think. But as we see, the market is about human-to-human relationships and about unique objects. And so those relationships can also change and develop very fast and that’s what’s happened here.

What were some of the approaches that you took this year considering that overall feeling of trepidation regarding the market?

We basically do what we’ve always done. We observe the art market very closely, and we adapt to it. That really involves more long-term planning as opposed to just reacting to the current state of the art market or what people are saying. The goal this year was to really further rejuvenate and diversify the fair. We have 285 galleries coming from 40 countries, and 22 of these galleries are newcomers to the fair, which is quite a high number. So it’s really interesting to see so many new faces and all new approaches on the show floor and so many high quality booths.

We also extended the citywide program this year by bringing [Agnes Denes’s] Wheatfield: A Confrontation (2024), where it takes up nearly the entire Messeplatz, as well as bringing the Parcours sector, which [this year] is curated by Stefanie Hessler, director of the Swiss Institute, closer to Messe Basel on Clarastrasse, the regular shopping street that connects the Messeplatz and the Rhine. There’s also a music and performance program at the Hotel Merian, which is very exciting.

What are some of the more under the radar things that people shouldn’t miss at the fair?

I think for me one of the big highlights of the show are the more tightly curated works in the Statements sector. This year presents very emerging artists like the Sandra Poulson from Angola with Jahmek Contemporary Art or the Norwegian-Sudanese artist Ahmed Umar, who brought 15 sculptural works that represent personal prayers; [Umar] is represented by a first-time participant to the fair, OSL Contemporary. The Features sector is also wonderful. There, we are showing 16 historical projects like Parker Gallery’s presentation of works by Gladys Nilsson or oil paintings by artist Irène Zurkinden, who was born in Basel, by the New York gallery Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Are you already thinking about next year, about things that you might want to change?

Oh yes, I’ve been thinking about next year for quite a long time [laughs], but I can’t tell you anything specific yet. I have a lot of ideas, I can say that. I’m really waiting to analyze what the re-contextualization of Parcours presents and how the [Denes] project works. I really look at every single detail, the conversations program, Hotel Merian, and then we really look into how we can further improve it or what new inventions we will bring next year. It’s too early to say, but there are a lot of ideas in my head.

The fair happens every year. How much prep time is involved in that on your end?

Here’s an example. When I first came on I had the idea to change the Parcours sector right away. And I’m so glad that I immediately had the thought and the support because it needed to be an implemented immediately for it to really work. It took the whole year. So, you really have to start changes well in advance, maybe one and a half years before the next show.

Lately, there’s been a lot of talk, especially here in the States, that Art Basel Paris, launched in 2022, might be more attractive, particularly to American collectors, than Art Basel’s Swiss fair. What makes the two fairs unique?

Well, first I have to say that we’ve profited very much from Paris. Otherwise, we wouldn’t do it. [Laughs.] Every fair that works well for our galleries really broadens our network. We profit from that and vice versa. So since we launched the show in Paris, we have many more French collectors also coming to Basel. And that happens all over the place, especially since we opened Miami Beach [in 2002] and Hong Kong [in 2013]. Each fair attracts a different kind of crowd. The Paris show is more concentrated. It’s a little bit smaller. But of course it’s taking place in the major art metropolis of Paris. We’ll have around 190 galleries, and a third of those are from France. In Basel, we have 285 galleries, 60 percent  of which are European, with the rest coming from other countries from all over the world.

The program in Basel [this year] is very ambitious and complex. It won’t exist like this for a second time. It’s very modern and broad—and it should be. Basel is where we come from. It’s our mother fair, our flagship. It’s our center.

The company bought the work from Christie’s London in 1987 for $39.9 million, a record at the time. The heirs of its previous owner, Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy had sought to get it back, claiming that it had been stolen during World War II.

According to the Art Newspaper, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s heirs claimed that Sompo Holdings ignored the work’s potential provenance issues. A judge in Illinois, however, dismissed the case due to lack of jurisdiction over the Tokyo-based holdings company. 

The lawsuit was filed in Illinois in part because Sompo has business dealings in the state and because the picture had been part of the 2001 exhibition “Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South” at the Art Institute of Chicago. During negotiations with Sompo’s museum in Tokyo, a museum official allegedly told the Art Institute that there was concern over the work’s provenance, and that that while they believed Sunflowers nothing to do with Nazi-looted art, they were “not 100% sure.”  

According to the complaint, filed in December 2022, the heirs claim that Mendelssohn-Bartholdy “never intended to transfer any of his paintings and that he was forced to transfer them only because of threats and economic pressures by the Nazi government.”

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy sold the painting in 1934, and died of natural causes the year afterward. He lost both his job and his bank under Hitler’s rule, and the lack of contemporaneous sales records makes it unclear if Mendelssohn-Bartholdy was forced to sell the work for less than it was worth.

The plaintiffs, Julius H. Schoeps, Britt-Marie Enhoerning, and Florence von Kesselstatt, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of more than 30 additional beneficiaries, sought to reclaim the $250 million painting along with $750 million in punitive damages.

Sunflowers is part of a group of three such paintings Van Gogh made in 1888 and 1889. The other two are in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and London’s National Gallery. 

If one were to liken the marquee New York auctions in May to the homecoming game between rival high schools, then Art Basel is certainly the art world’s prom. Next week, 287 galleries from around the world, including the four biggest, will jet to Switzerland, closely followed by the traveling circus of collectors, art advisers, and, of course, journalists.

And, while rumors are flying that the newly christened Art Basel Paris may soon overshadow the Swiss flagship fair, plenty of dealers are pushing back. As one dealer told ARTnews, the fair in Basel is still where galleries show their best work, and the collectors—even if they prefer Paris—will follow. That sentiment was echoed by Tornabuoni gallery coordinator Ursula Casamonti, who told ARTnews the gallery saved its best—six works by proto-Surrealist Giorgio de Chirico—for Art Basel.

“I hope all the galleries do the same,” she said. “I’m worried that the people around the world have the idea that Paris+ will be better than Basel.”

ARTnews reached out to art dealers with reputations for bringing the most select, choice, and rare secondary market works and asked: what’s on the menu? Bon appétit. Or perhaps, more appropriately, En Guete.

Hauser & Wirth

The Swiss gallery giant is bringing several big-ticket works to its home art fair, none perhaps more exciting than Philip Guston’s Orders, a defining late-era work completed two years before his death in 1980. Priced at $10 million and depicting a cluster of shoes silhouetted against a pink-and-blue sky that rises above a crimson horizon line, the work was included in Guston’s 1980 retrospective at SFMOMA. It continued to travel for the following year, before being sold at Sotheby’s in 1989 for $528,000 from the collection of art collector and Southern California real estate magnate Edwin Janss Jr. As the gallery told ARTnews in an email, “The forms in Orders are personal symbols of the broader historical and psychological trauma that reverberates powerfully throughout the artist’s late oeuvre.”

The gallery is also bringing the largest charcoal drawing by Arshile Gorky still in a private collection, Untitled (Gray Drawing (Pastoral)), from 1946-47 priced at $16 million. There is also the marble and wood Louise Bourgeois sculpture Woman with Packages (1987–93), consigned by her trust for $3.5 million. Other works include an oil-on-cardboard Francis Picabia painting titled Nu assis listed at $4.85 million, and the David Smith stainless steel and wood sculpture Aggressive Character (1947), being sold from Smith’s estate.

Gagosian

For Gagosian’s booth at Unlimited, the fair’s sector for monumental works, the gallery is bringing a work that may carry some sentimental value: an untitled 1970 masterwork by Minimalist Donald Judd that was first shown by Gagosian’s late mentor, Leo Castelli, in New York. A related work is in the Guggenheim in New York’s permanent collection. The sculpture consists of a band of five-foot-high galvanized iron panels standing end-to-end, eight inches from the surrounding walls. The gallery’s booth presentation will be supplemented by a show of works by Judd at their Basel location consisting of 11 single-unit, wall-mounted works made between 1987 and 1991 at the artist’s home and studio near Lake Lucerne. While the gallery did not provide an exact price for the 1970 work, ARTnews has learned that is priced in the region of $15 million to $20 million.

Pace

While Pace is bringing an extensive presentation anchored by historical 20th-century works from marquee names like Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, and Pablo Picasso, the gallery is betting that Jean Dubuffet’s Banc-Salon will be the showstopper. Anchoring the booth, the installation comprises a low swooping bench with three kites that hover above, encouraging tired fairgoers to sit and reflect.

But, for our money, Agnes Martin’s Untitled #20 (1974) will be the real star attraction. The painting last sold at auction in 2012, at Christie’s New York, where it made $2.43 million. But, as we wrote this past November, the artist’s market has been heating up in the intervening years—in November, Sotheby’s sold a 1961 painting by Martin, Grey Stone II , for $18.7 million. While Pace declined to provide current pricing, it is very likely that the Martin will be the gallery’s priciest offering at the fair.

Thaddaeus Ropac

Among the significant works heading to Basel courtesy of Thaddaeus Ropac are Sigmar Polke’s 1994 canvas Lapis Lazuli. The picture, priced at $3.8 million, is a brilliantly blue abstraction from what Polke called his “alchemical” turn, during which the artist moved away from artistic takes on consumer culture and began exploring the use of forgotten pigments like lapis lazuli, a blue shade ground from stone that was prized in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Also notable is Market Altar / ROCI MEXICO (1985), the inaugural work from Robert Rauschenberg’s 1984–91 Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) program. Not seen publicly since the final ROCI program exhibition in 1990 and never having been on the market, the work is priced at $3.85 million.

The gallery is also bringing Georg Baselitz’s roughly five-foot-tall sculpture of a female head in cadmium yellow, Dresdner Frauen – Die Elbe (1990/2023). The carving was roughly hewn with a chainsaw, an axe, and a chisel from a single tree trunk in 1990; it was cast in bronze in 2023. There are five “Frauen” in museum permanent collections, including Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. It is priced at $2.18 million.

Lévy Gorvy Dayan

An untitled David Hammons sculpture from 1990 anchors Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s Basel presentation. Consisting primarily of a coat rack with hat stand, the five-and-a-half foot sculpture, priced at around $9 million, features rubber, plastic bags, paper bags, a tin can, and a baseball cap, all of which give it a very humanlike aspect. The work’s first appearance at an art fair, it has been exhibited publicly only once, at Tilton Gallery in 2006.

“It’s an incredibly powerful piece that is very political and it’s very much, I feel, a self-portrait of the artist,” Dominique Lévy told ARTnews. “It’s the heart of our presentation.”

The gallery is also bringing Übernagelter Hocker (1963) by German artist Günther Uecker. Basically a wooden stool, the seat and one leg of which are covered in painted nails, the sculpture was created the same year as Stuhl II (Chair II), in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. It is expected to fetch around $1.5 million.

Landau Fine Art

The Montreal gallery will be bringing Wassily Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II, 1910, a piece stolen by the Nazis in 1938. Gallery founder Robert Landau purchased it this past March at Sotheby’s London for 37.2 million GBP ($44.8 million), making it the 9th most expensive work sold at auction last year. Landau then promptly exhibited the painting at both TEFAF Maastricht and TEFAF New York. And though the painting may be at Art Basel, it won’t be for sale.

“It does not have a price on it and it’s going to be front and center at Art Basel and I’m sure there will be a lot of people looking at it,” Landau told ARTnews. “Why not? It’s of great interest to people.”

Landau said that he has spent the last year working on a book about Murnau and has invested millions additionally in the work, including a consultation with a museum curator. Landau claimed that an auction house evaluation put the work’s value at more than $100 million.

Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art

With Jean-Michel Basquiat continuing to run hot with numerous auction sales in May, the Upper East Side gallery will be bringing Cash Crop, a 1984 acrylic-and-oilstick depicting a silhouetted figure in front of a sugar box. The $5 million to $6 million price tag is significantly higher than at its last appearance at auction, when it sold for £713,250, or around $1.11 million, at a 2010 Phillips evening sale in London. The estimate for the work then, when it was consigned by Gagosian, was £600,000 to £900,000.

Gallery director Stacie Khandros told ARTnews that the recent auction sales had prompted more conversations with potential consignors compared to last year. “I think we’re still optimistic that … what we have is still competitive pricing. And I think our works are spectacular. It’s just finding the right price to entice potential buyers,” Khandros said.

Editor’s Note, 6/11/2024: An earlier version of this story stated that the price of the 1970 work by Donald Judd offered by Gagosian was $10 million. It has been updated with a revised figure of $15 to $20 million.

The store, which marks the brand’s first push into the retail/lifestyle sector, will feature exclusive and special edition collectibles, clothing, design pieces, and published works curated by Sarah Andelman, founder of the Parisian concept store Colette. The store will be open to both visitors to the fair and the general public starting on June 11; the fair begins its VIP previews on June 10.

Andelman has built a reputation for her novel approach to retail and her recent collaborations with the French luxury perfume house Diptyque and another LVMH-owned brand, the French department store Le Bon Marche.

In a press release Art Basel’s chief growth officer Hayler Romer said that the brand’s audience “has a strong desire for products that bottle and preserve the unique experience of being at Art Basel long after the show closes” and noted that the Art Basel Store “is fully aligned” with the brand’s vision to engage its audience and “deliver more value to galleries, artists, and cultural partners.”

The store could be seen as the first step in broadening Art Basel’s appeal across the art and luxury sectors and a clever move from Romer, who joined Art Basel in last September. Romer came to the fair company after serving as publisher and chief revenue officer of Atlantic Media, where she was initially hired as the head of luxury advertising; she had previously worked at Forbes Media as head of luxury advertising and media giant Condé Nast as executive director of corporate sales.

Among the items available at the shop will be range of memorabilia and apparel under the brand name AB by Art Basel, a string of products in collaboration with artists from Christine Sun Kim, a wooden replica of the Jean-Michel Basquiat Ferris Wheel at the Luna Luna theme park, and solo, diptych, or triptych skateboard decks decorated with designs by Cindy Sherman.

The verdict, which was first published in the Los Angeles Times, marks the end of a tumultuous career for the 80-year-old contemporary art dealer, who now faces a statutory maximum sentence of 15 years in federal prison.

Allegations of fraud and dirty dealing have followed Chrismas since the 1970s. But the dealer, who was once considered among the most powerful in the US, with a roster that held names as influential as Richard Serra and Ed Ruscha, was long able to avoid prosecution, despite accusations of fabricating works, withholding payments to his artists, and refusing to return works that hadn’t sold.

The first major lawsuit came in the mid-1970s when artist Robert Motherwell sued him for the disappearance of nine works. A decade later, Chrismas was accused of losing $1.2 million worth of art that collector Frederick Stimpson had given Ace Gallery for safekeeping; he spent three days in jail on felony grand theft charges.

His current situation stems from the latest in a string of bankruptcy filings. In 2013, unable to pay rent on his 30,000-square-foot flagship gallery on LA’s Miracle Mile, Chrismas filed for Chapter 11. During the bankruptcy proceedings, which took place between 2013 and 2016, Chrismas remained Ace Gallery’s president, trustee, and custodian.

It was during this time that prosecutors said Chrismas embezzled $264,595 from the bankruptcy estate by writing checks to the Ace Museum, a nonprofit corporation that Chrismas owned and controlled, and securing funds owed the gallery from previous sales, some of which was given to Ace Museum’s landlord for the space’s $225,000 monthly rent.

According to the Los Angeles Times, prosecutors said during the trial that Ace Museum was meant to be “the culmination of [Chrismas’s] life’s work.”

“He wanted a legacy and he was willing to use other people’s money to buy that legacy,” David Williams, an assistant US attorney, said during the trial. “You can’t chase your dreams with somebody else’s money. That’s called stealing.”

Chrismas’s attorney, Jennifer Williams, disputed these claims during trial, saying “There’s no evidence, zero evidence that Mr. Chrismas as the owner of the gallery couldn’t make loans himself to other companies within his gallery universe.”

Chrismas was arrested by the FBI in July 2021 on three federal counts of embezzlement, and released the following day on $50,000 bail. In 2022, a federal court ordered Chrismas to pay $14.2 million in a bankruptcy case that dated back to 2013.

A sentencing hearing has been scheduled for September 9.