Wet Paint: Marlborough Gallery to Permanently Close Amid Coup Against Ailing Patriarch, When Woody Met Roman, and More Juicy Art-World Gossip

Every Thursday afternoon, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint,
a gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate
Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate
at nfreeman@artnet.com.

FAMILY FEUD TAKES DOWN LEGENDARY SPACE

The nearly 80-year-old
Marlborough Gallery, one of the most storied
galleries of the postwar era, will close its New York operations
amid a power struggle that pitted members of its ownership family
against one another in a Shakespearean drama. Most notably, the
retired former head of the London gallery Gilbert
Lloyd—the son of gallery founder Frank
Lloyd (who Anglicized his name from Levai)—and the Lloyd
family has ousted Frank’s nephew Pierre
Levai, the longtime maître of the gallery and a part owner
of the trust, together with his son, Max
Levai, who was named president last year. The decision was
made during board meetings in June, Max Levai confirmed to
Wet Paint in a statement Thursday after another
meeting. 

The dramatic coup played out
swiftly while the 83-year-old Pierre Levai was in hospice care,
suffering from serious complications from
COVID-19 when he got word of the
decision.

“As he lay battling for his
life, after testing positive for COVID-19 this spring, the board
used his condition for their own advantage, and voted while he was
incapacitated to permanently close the New York gallery,” Max Levai
said in a statement. “The architects of this maneuver are Board
leaders Franz Plutschow, head accountant for
Marlborough International since the Frank Lloyd
days and the Rothko Case, and Stanley J.
Bergman of Withers Bergman.”

Word about trouble within the
upper ranks of Marlborough’s august board started spreading late
last week, with many sources coming forward to spill that the
gallery—which has seen some turnover among staff in the last few
years—was on its last legs. Some sources indicated that while
business was going relatively well during the coronavirus shutdown,
the board decided to throw away exhibition schedules and an
ambitious expansion plan in order to consolidate funds to weather
the sputtering economy and probable
recession.  

The rumors turned out to be
true—and then some. One half of the family was defenestrating the
other.

“Having been effectively
terminated by the Board of Trustees of the Lloyd Family Trusts, I
have regrettably broken with the international Board of Marlborough
Gallery,” Max Levai said. “This is an unfortunate ending because
things were going well, and so much was planned for the future.
However, decisions made by the Board of Trustees with regard to
their treatment of me and my family have had legal ramifications
and exacerbated serious health issues for my parents.”

It is unclear what lies ahead
for the gallery in London. The Chelsea
Arts Tower, which has housed the downtown New York space
since it opened in 2007, is still owned by the Lloyd family trust.
The board voted to pay a termination fee last year to break its
lease on the gallery space on 57th Street, which had been home to
Marlborough since in first opened in New York in
1963. 

The news comes after much of the
Marlborough staff was already laid off or furloughed in March as
businesses were shutting down. Another wave of temporary—now
permanent—terminations came in April. 

While some sources indicated
that business was steady, others—including nearly a half-dozen
sources who have either worked for the gallery or were familiar
with its business—said that the board of trustees, which consists
mostly of bankers and professionals outside the art world, were
wary of the art business, concerned about declining sales, and
wanted to shield their holdings by phasing out the gallery
model. 

But other sources indicated that
the lynchpin behind the board’s stealth machinations was an
abortive real estate deal that, when approved a year ago, looked
like a bullish investment in the future of the gallery by the
board. In mid-2019, Max Levai announced that the gallery would be
purchasing the building next door at 547 West 25th Street, which
had been home for decades to Chelsea outfit Cheim &
Read. The cost was $19 million—a down payment was sent to
co-owner Howard Read—and an elaborate plan to
combine the two buildings into a single space was approved by the
Chelsea Arts Tower and the Department of Buildings of New
York. 

Then, on January 10, 2020, a
deed—a copy of which was obtained by Wet Paint—was filed in the
office of the city register of the city of New York transferring
the ownership of the entire lot from Second Generation,
LLC, the corporation associated with other transactions
involving spaces occupied by the Cheim & Read space. It listed a
new owner: John Cheim. According to the document,
Cheim paid $0 for the property, just incurring a filing fee of $250
and a recording fee of $47. A press representative for Cheim & Read
said the gallery—which decamped from Chelsea to a pared-down Upper
East Side office in 2018—had no comment. 

Such estate shuffling between
two dealers who, according to reports, had already sold the
building presaged what was to come. Earlier this week, as a payment
to Read was due, the board abruptly pulled out of the deal—citing,
per sources, the state of the art market in the age of
COVID-19—essentially eating the $2 million deposit it gave to Read,
and reneging on the agreed-upon purchase. The decision to close the
gallery’s current space in the Chelsea Arts Tower came days later.
Before the phoned-in board meeting this week, sources said, there
was little indication of the shuttering, though there were a few
phone calls from Bergman—legal council for Marlborough Fine Art in
London over the decades—inquiring regarding Pierre Levai’s
health.

The timing of the closure is up
in the air. Max Levai is technically still president of the
gallery’s operations, and Marlborough is now participating in Art Basel’s current
online fair, showing a grouping of works by the late painter
R.B. Kitaj. Vice President Pascal
Spengemann is still working as well, and will be informing
the artists on the gallery roster of next steps. 

Even if the Lloyd family opts to
continue the gallery in London under different auspices, this marks
the end of a crucial chapter of New York gallery history. Founded
in London in 1946, Marlborough was arguably the first mega-gallery,
as it created the model of having many branches in cities around
the world to introduce one continent’s artists to another
continent’s collectors. The New York branch represented many of the
most important Abstract Expressionists of the day, including
Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko,
Robert Motherwell, and Philip
Guston. Starting in the 1970s, the New York space was run
by Pierre Levai, who weathered the storm after Marlborough sold
more than 100 Rothkos at undervalued prices and was fined millions
by a New York state court—a scandal that has clung to the gallery
name ever since. 

The younger Levai has been in
charge of the Chelsea space since 2013, and, along with Spengemann,
introduced a new set of younger artists to the program, such
as Andrew Kuo, Lars
Fisk, and the duo of Jonah
Freeman and Justin Lowe. Right now,
Levai—who has no leadership position or ownership stake in the
trust—will spend the summer running the just-opened project
Alone Gallery, a one-at-a-time social-distancing
space in the Hamptons that currently has up a selection of work by
Alex Katz, and a group show of Marlborough artists
such as Tony Matelli, Keith
Meyerson, and Werner
Büttner. 

Max Levai said that he is
putting this chapter behind him and looks forward to what’s to
come. 

“It is the great artists, some
inherited from years of history with Marlborough, and others who
have more recently joined the program, who are truly responsible
for the incredible moments and memories we will always cherish,” he
said. “My top priority is to
protect our artists and their work.”

TO ROMAN WITH LOVE

You probably didn’t read
Woody Allen’s new memoir Apropos of
Nothing, where he takes on what he calls the “#MeToo zealots.”
Reviews called it “grim reading” and “tone deaf and banal.” If you
started it but didn’t finish, tough luck with the rest because “the
final third of this book falls apart dreadfully,” said
Dwight Garner in the New
York Times.  

But if nothing else, those who
skipped it missed out on a Woody self-own for the ages that
involves his longtime pal, Larry Gagosian. Like
you, Wet Paint did not read this book, but a
source sent over a few pages that concern the world’s most powerful
art dealer, and it’s an epic misunderstanding that boggles the
mind. Let’s dive in.

Woody and his wife,
Soon-Yi Previn, are in the South of France, having
lunch with Gagosian. In the memoir, Woody recalls that he heard
Gagosian invite him to a lunch with Roman
Polanski. This, to Woody, sounds like a swell idea. Though
he hasn’t seen Polanski in 40 years, he’s totally willing to hang
out with a fugitive who hasn’t set foot on American soil in decades
because he’s been evading statutory rape charges stemming from an
assault on the 13-year-old girl in 1977. A few weeks later, Larry
arranges for a dinner, so Woody and Soon-Yi drive
to Château de la Croë, a magnificent pad on
the Cap d’Antibes, and when they arrived,
they were greeted by a woman who introduced herself as Roman’s
wife, She then introduced Soon-Yi to Roman, and they start talking
about, per the memoir, “some other topic like yachts or private
aircraft.”

Suddenly, Woody nudged his wife.
“That’s not Roman Polanski,” he said to Soon-Yi. “His wife just
introduced him,” Soon-Yi said. “You didn’t catch it because you’re
deaf as Beethoven.” Woody insisted that this person was not the
disgraced Polish filmmaker, and eventually, they figured out what
was going on: they were not with Roman Polanski, they were
with Roman Abramovich, the mega-collector
Russian billionaire. (His wife at the time, who provided the
ill-fated intro, was Dasha Zhukova, but they have
since divorced.)

Woody shrugged off the
galactic-level misunderstanding, but Larry Gagosian was less
than chill about the whole thing. “When Gagosian shows up and we
relate the whole thing to him, he can’t seem to figure out how we
could possibly misunderstood,” Woody wrote. “I explained to him we
discussed Roman Polanski, agreed to see him for dinner the next
time Larry would be in town. So now, you come to town, you call,
and say, ‘Shall we go to Roman’s for dinner?’ How could I know you
meant Roman Abramovich?” Woody didn’t get off unscathed, though. He
admitted that “the story spread like cholera, and I was the rube of
the Cote d’Azur social set.” 

WHITE WOMEN WANTED

Think way, way back the
heady early days of the Donald Trump presidency,
when a group of dealers and artists started a movement called
Dear Ivanka. The mission was to try and convince
the first daughter—who just years earlier was essentially a
gallery-scene hanger-on, content to spend her days hobnobbing at
charity functions and snapping up Dan Colen
paintings—to talk some sense into her father. That went well. Now,
Helen Molesworth, the curator who was fired from
MOCA in Los Angeles amid a
shakeup that eventually kicked director Philippe
Vergne to the curb, has started an activist group in
response to the recent protests surrounding the killing of
George Floyd. Call it “Dear White Women.”

And that means just white women. In an email message
obtained by Wet Paint, Molesworth describes the
group as “an all-white group” that will be “working together as
white women to understand our role in a racist society.”

The group will stage 90-minute
Zoom meetings to address a few issues. “I’ve heard ad infinitum
from my white sisters that they ‘don’t know what they can say’ or
they are ‘afraid’ to speak for saying the wrong thing,” Molesworth
said. Another issue she’d like to address? “I’ve heard loud and
clear from many of our African American sisters that they are
exhausted by being asked to explain what they see as basic history,
facts, and feelings to white audiences. The time has come for us to
educate ourselves so we can be better allies in what is now a
centuries-long struggle for equality and justice.”

If any white women want to joint
the all-white group they can email whitewomen2020@gmail.com

BIESENBACH’S BAD FOLLOW-BACK

A few weeks ago Wet
Paint dug into Jeffrey Epstein’s little
black book and found that many, many art world bigwigs had at least
some connection to the billionaire convicted sex offender who stood
accused of trafficking underaged girls. But what
about Ghislaine Maxwell,
Epstein’s number two and alleged co-conspirator in the sickening
sex ring? If you’ve seen the Netflix documentary
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, one survivor after another
makes it clear that Maxwell was very involved in enabling Epstein’s
alleged crimes. But she hasn’t been heard from since that strange,
probably photoshopped image of her at an In-N-Out
Burger surfaced last summer. Perhaps we’ve found a clue—a
tipster sent in what appears to be Maxwell’s
Instagram that links to The TerraMar
Project, her ocean conservation nonprofit that was shut
down last year as the charges were brought against her former
partner. And look who’s following Ghislaine’s account—that would be
Klaus Biesenbach, director of
MOCA in Los Angeles.

Not much is known of their
relationship, apart from the fact they both attended Martha
Stewart’s inaugural American Made Awards in 2012, as can
be seen in the photo above. A rep for MOCA did not respond to a
request for comment. 

POP QUIZ

Last week was a Pop
Quiz that touched upon some many things that your humble
trivia proprietor loves and misses. Namely: Los
Angeles, long lunches at fabulous restaurants, bawdy
scribblings on ephemera, and open-air galleries in the downtown
arts district. Here’s all the details. The drawing was by
Paul McCarthy, as many guessed, but it was not one
of his “Sushi Drawings,” the sketches he made on placemats from the
Yamaha Restaurant in Glendale
that are currently in the collection of the
Hammer. Rather, it’s one of the sketches he made
on the menu for Manuela, the breezy restaurant inside of
Hauser & Wirth’s expansive Los Angeles
compound. 

It’s currently hanging on a wall
near the open kitchen—though you can’t see it right now, since the
restaurant is closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Here’s to hoping
it reopens soon. 

This week, there’s just two
winners—but we appreciate all the guesses! The two people who
responded correctly actually both work for Karma,
the beloved New York gallery and bookshop, but they answered
independently. And they are: Alexis Kerin, Karma’s
Los Angeles director; and Karma books proprietor Matt
Shuster. Congrats to the two of you!

Here’s this week’s quiz, and we
think that a few more people can get it this week if you really put
your brains to work. Name the person whose hand this is, name the
work in the background on the right, and name the owner of the
work.

Winners get martinis at
Lucien! We are really going to enjoy purchasing
all these martinis for Pop Quiz winners one day. 

WE HEAR…

A collector with “an important
private American collection” is callously cashing in on the death of
artist Matthew Wong by consigning the
large painting The Realm of Appearances to
Sotheby’s, where it’s set to sell this month for
$60,000 to $80,000—and another collector, a real estate agent, has
consigned another large 2018 painting, Landscape With Young
Bather, to Phillips for its 20th Century &
Contemporary Art Afternoon Sale in July … Fortnight
Institute, the beloved salon and gallery in the
East Village, will close permanently, though
founders Fabiola Alondra and Jane
Harmon are looking for a new space … adviser
Benjamin Godsill is organizing a group show at
Joel Mesler’s East Hampton
gallery, Rental, with a portion of sales proceeds
going to Stony Brook Southampton
Hospital’s Healthcare Heroes Fund for COVID-19;
artists in the show include Jonas Wood, Rashid Johnson,
Hugh Hayden, Austyn Weiner, Borna Sammak, Farah Al Qasami, Josh
Kline, and Anicka Yi …
Berlin galleries are opening up and local
favorite Société is on the move, as they’ve
packed it up and opened a new space in the
Charlottenburg hood, a hop, skip, and a jump
from a number of galleries as well as the art boîte Paris
Bar … Bob Dylan spent his quarantine
painting, so perhaps another Gagosian show is in
the offing whenever all this is over … if you’re not quick enough
to be the first commenter on Jonathan Monk’s
Instagram and thus have missed your chance to buy one of his
fabulous receipt drawings, boy are you in luck: dealer Tom
Lee is raffling off two works given to him by the artist,
with proceeds going to a grants for young BIPOC artists, and
there’s no limit on buying tickets—so snap them up before the
drawing Friday … Nicole Eisenman’s new
portrait of writer Sarah Nicole Prickett sold at
the Hauser & Wirth booth at Art Basel‘s online
viewing room for $150,000 to a European foundation
… 

SPOTTED

Vincent
Fremont, former manager of Andy Warhol’s
studio, entering the comments on a Matthew Higgs
Instagram post to offer up his review of Blake
Gopnik’s doorstop of a Warhol biography: “It was a slog of
a read & boring.” *** Helen Marden checking in on
the lily pads at Tower Hill, Anne
Bass’s island estate in Nevis ***
Dakis Joannou flashing back to a happening on his
Jeff Koons-designed yacht,
Guilty, with Maurizio Cattelan
and Martin Parr taking pictures of Fawn
Rogers sitting on a David Shrigley bed
*** OG food critic Robert Sietsema stumbling into
a silver hot rod with a vanity plate that says WINNING at the
Mobile station on 8th Avenue in the
Meatpacking District—perhaps, he intimated, it
belongs with Charlie Sheen ***

PARTING SHOT

The post Wet Paint: Marlborough Gallery to Permanently Close
Amid Coup Against Ailing Patriarch, When Woody Met Roman, and More
Juicy Art-World Gossip appeared first on artnet
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