Knoedler, via Bloomberg News

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By Lindsay Pollock

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) — For a sedate gallery housed almost 40 years in an imposing Renaissance-style mansion on New York’s Upper East Side, Knoedler & Co. has seen a lot of activity recently.

Director and president Ann Freedman has departed, the associate director has been fired and there’s been an exodus of important gallery artists.
Meanwhile, owner Michael A. Hammer has announced that he might move Knoedler into the hip Chelsea and Meatpacking areas.

Hammer, president and chairman of 8-31 Holdings, which owns Knoedler (and the Hammer Galleries on 57th Street), has listed the seven-story building for sale with Sotheby’s International Realty Inc. for $59.5 million, making it the second most expensive private residence for sale in Manhattan, according to Streeteasy, a New York-area real-estate Web Site.

“We hope to find a more museum-quality space to accommodate larger exhibitions and pieces,” the Los Angeles- based Hammer said in the statement.

He is also chairman and chief executive officer of the Armand Hammer Foundation and grandson of industrialist Armand Hammer, who purchased Knoedler in 1971.
Knoedler has operated from the 1909 townhouse on East 70th Street since 1971. The gallery features postwar artists, including Helen Frankenthaler and Milton Avery.

Signs of unrest at the gallery began to appear in October with the resignation of Freedman, director for 32 years and additionally president for the past 15 years. Frank Del Deo, the gallery’s former director and senior vice president, was promoted to Freedman’s role. Freedman and the gallery declined to discuss her departure.

Murky Departure

In December, associate director Per Haubro Jensen, a 10- year veteran, was fired. Hammer and Del Deo declined to be interviewed.

Solidarity with Freedman and consternation over the murky circumstances behind her departure led some artists to quit the gallery.

Artist Lee Bontecou, whose canvas and metal sculptures have sold for as much as $847,500 at auction, subsequently left the gallery, as did the estate of painter Jules Olitski. A major Olitski show, slated to open in November, was canceled.

“We didn’t want this show to get lost in the middle of the mess that was brewing,” said Lauren Poster, the artist’s daughter, who is the director of the Olitski estate.
Olitski’s paintings retail for $200,000 to $300,000, Poster said. She described Freedman as “an extraordinary art dealer,” and said not having her there during the Olitski show was “completely unacceptable.”

Sargent, Raphael

The gallery, founded in 1846 by Michael Knoedler, has shown a mix of European and contemporary American art, including Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. Andrew Mellon bought Raphael’s famed “Alba Madonna,’’ now owned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Henry Clay Frick acquired half the artworks now displayed at the Frick Collection at the gallery, according to a Knoedler catalog.

Knoedler’s next exhibition, which opens Feb. 18, features Avery’s little-known Depression-era urban scenes.

“We are going to see this show through and see how things end up,” said Sean Cavanaugh, the artist’s grandson and trustee of the Milton Avery Trust. “Some other people jumped ship, but we’ll see, and then decisions can be made.”