Art Dealers

In art circles, the Wildenstein family is royalty, a wealthy, powerful dynasty whose name is almost as famous as the celebrated masterpieces it owns. The Wildenstein collection, amassed over the last 140 years, is, say experts, an "Aladdin's Cave," boasting 10,000 works by distinguished Old Masters and Impressionists, including Cézanne, Renoir, Manet, Monet and Van Gogh, to name a few. Such is the magnitude of this treasure trove, dotted around the globe in Paris, London, New York, Buenos Aires and Tokyo, that few outside the family know exactly what it contains.

One of the biggest problems in our politics is that people don't think for themselves. We let radio and television hosts, pundits and politicians tell us what to believe. And one of the biggest problems in our arts is that people don't enjoy for themselves. We let museum curators, gallery owners, critics and professors tell us what to feel. A recent battle in the art world illustrates the point. The billionaire Ronald Perelman is suing the multimillionaire art dealer Larry Gagosian on the grounds, among others, that Gagosian overvalued an unfinished sculpture of Popeye (yes, the Sailor Man)

In a wide-ranging antitrust investigation, the Justice Department has subpoenaed financial documents from several prominent New York art dealers and the auction houses Sotheby's and Christie's, the New York Times reported. Justice Department spokeswoman Jennifer Rose confirmed that an antitrust investigation is occurring. Dealers said they believe the probe centers on the possibility of collusion and price-fixing among art dealers buying at auction.

Arts organizations in New York that have sustained damage from Hurricane Sandy are getting a helping hand from foundations and other groups that have agreed to donate money to the relief effort. The Andy Warhol Foundation recently announced that it has allocated $2 million that will go to help artists and nonprofit arts organizations that have experienced serious damage from the storm. The foundation said the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Lambent Foundation will add to the money.

Is an anonymous strip of South La Cienega Boulevard the next hot spot in L.A.'s art gallery scene? Dealers Anna Helwing, Tim Blum and Jeff Poe are banking on it. Helwing launched herself in the gallery business in mid-July in a 2,000-square-foot space at 2766 S. La Cienega Blvd., just north of Washington Boulevard. Blum and Poe, who have operated a small but prestigious contemporary art gallery in Santa Monica for the past nine years, will move to a 5,000-square-foot gallery at 2754 S.

After 23 years of dealing in art in the area, Sigmund and Muriel Wenger are moving to Los Angeles. It is a remarkable move, not only because of the couple's long identification with the San Diego art scene, but also because they are both in their 70s. The expectation would be that they would retire after having made a significant contribution to San Diego's art history. But the Wengers have always been an adventurous pair.

Benjamin Horowitz, influential art dealer who opened his Heritage Gallery in 1961, representing such artists as Charles White, William Gropper and David Alfaro Siqueiros, and a decade later became founding president of the Art Dealers Assn. of California, has died. He was 92. Horowitz died Friday in Los Angeles of natural causes, according to his gallery co-director, Charlotte Sherman.

Kathy Fuld, the art-collecting wife of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. Chief Executive Richard Fuld, is selling a $20-million set of rare Abstract Expressionist drawings at a November auction, according to two art dealers. Christie's International, which is offering the works in New York on Nov. 12, declined to reveal the seller's identity. The auction house announced the sale of the drawings, including three by Willem de Kooning, four days after Lehman filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S.

Herbert Bearl Palmer, one of the first art dealers in Los Angeles to exhibit works by David Hockney, Bridget Riley and other leading contemporary artists, starting in the mid-1960s, died Dec. 12. He was 91. Palmer, who helped establish La Cienega Boulevard as an art district more than 40 years ago, died at his home in Brentwood of natural causes, his daughter, Meredith, said.

Stanley R. Lerner--the 25-year-old Beverly Hills art dealer who helped authorities crack a major art fraud case--was sentenced Monday to three years in federal prison for cocaine dealing, although U.S. District Judge Robert M. Tagasuki said the time could be served in a halfway house. The judge pronounced the sentence, which also included a $50,000 fine and five years probation, behind closed doors.

The annual ArtReview Power 100 list is out and this year's ranking of the art world's most influential and powerful people features a woman in the No. 1 spot for the first time. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the curator at Documenta (13) in Germany, occupies the top slot as determined by an international jury convened by the online magazine. Last year's No. 1 was Ai Weiwei, who ranks No. 3 this year, just behind art dealer Larry Gagosian. Rounding out the top five are art dealers Iwan Wirth at No. 4 and David Zwirner at No. 5. ArtReview said Christov-Bakargiev was chosen for the No. 1 spot because of "her influential and globally ambitious" Documenta exhibition, which this year extended to Kabul, Afghanistan; Banff, Canada, and venues in Egypt.

Who is the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art? According to the museum it's Jeffrey Deitch, the former New York art dealer who - with virtually no prior museum experience - assumed the top job at one of America's leading institutions two years ago. But don't be so sure. Late Wednesday, MOCA dumped Paul Schimmel, its chief curator for 22 years and a prime reason for the museum's stellar international reputation. No curator working in the United States today has a more impressive record of exhibitions and acquisitions in the field of art since 1950 than Schimmel.

A long-running lawsuit to force the Norton Simon Museum to surrender one of its prized artworks, 480-year-old paired paintings of Adam and Eve by Lucas Cranach the Elder that were looted during the Holocaust, has reached what could be its last legal round: plaintiff Marei Von Saher's recent appeal to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. If her appeal fails, it could have far-reaching implications, potentially undermining a larger class of claims to recover Nazi-looted art. Von Saher, who lives in Connecticut, contends that the "Adam and Eve" diptych that has hung in the Pasadena museum since the late 1970s remains stolen goods.

The museum at Scripps College in Claremont enlisted a Los Angeles art dealer as co-curator of a Getty-funded Pacific Standard Time exhibition, violating a prominent ethics code that warns museums against allowing commercial interests to shepherd shows in nonprofit venues. "Clay's Tectonic Shift: John Mason, Ken Price and Peter Voulkos, 1956-1968" focuses on three artists credited with breakthroughs that transformed pottery from a studio craft to a sculptural form widely appreciated as fine art. The work of the trio being highlighted at Scripps' Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery has been cited as perhaps the first movement in postwar L.A. art to win renown in the wider world.

The Getty Museum is the first museum in North America to agree to return a painting to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker, a noted Dutch-Jewish art dealer whose huge collection was dispersed after he fled the 1940 Nazi invasion of Holland, with many of the prime works taken for the personal collection of Adolf Hitler's chief deputy, Hermann Goering. The museum's two-paragraph announcement Monday said it had bought "Landscape With Cottage and Figures," painted around 1640 by Pieter Molijn, "in good faith" at a 1972 auction.

In art circles, the Wildenstein family is royalty, a wealthy, powerful dynasty whose name is almost as famous as the celebrated masterpieces it owns. The Wildenstein collection, amassed over the last 140 years, is, say experts, an "Aladdin's Cave," boasting 10,000 works by distinguished Old Masters and Impressionists, including Cézanne, Renoir, Manet, Monet and Van Gogh, to name a few. Such is the magnitude of this treasure trove, dotted around the globe in Paris, London, New York, Buenos Aires and Tokyo, that few outside the family know exactly what it contains.

A prominent Beverly Hills art dealer was charged with five counts of grand theft Tuesday in connection with a widening police investigation into art fraud in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Lee Sonnier, former manager of the Upstairs Gallery on Rodeo Drive, was charged with failing to deliver four pieces of art that were sold for about $872,000. Three were works attributed to the Impressionist master Pierre Auguste Renoir and one was a drawing.

A Laguna Beach art dealer has been sentenced to two years in prison for selling San Fernando Valley art collectors nearly $90,000 in copies of authentic paintings by Chagall, Erte and Picasso, the Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday. Theodore John Robertson Jr., 46, was also ordered to pay $88,600 in restitution Tuesday in Los Angeles Municipal Court, Detective Bill Martin said.

Update: Internet pioneer David Bohnett has sold his Holmby Hills compound to art dealer Larry Gagosian for $15.5 million, according to public records. The technology entrepreneur and philanthropist had put the restored Holmby Hills estate on the market in early December at $18.9 million. Designed by A. Quincy Jones in the mid-'50s for Academy Award-winning actor Gary Cooper, the wood, stone and glass house has a canopied walkway that leads to the entrance.

A New York art dealer who duped collectors including tennis star John McEnroe and actor Robert De Niro out of more than $100 million was sentenced Tuesday to at least six years in prison. Lawrence Salander, 61, pleaded guilty in March in New York Supreme Court to an array of schemes, such as selling shares of the same work of art to multiple owners and selling artwork that did not belong to him and pocketing the proceeds. Salander was sentenced to between six and 18 years in prison and must also pay $120 million in restitution to victims under a plea agreement.