A $3 million Brice Marden painting on route to Sotheby’s for auction was destroyed during airport transit, according court papers filed Friday and reported in the New York Post.

Marden’s 1969 “Au Centre” was shipped by Gagosian Gallery’s London branch from Moscow to New York. A forklift operator smashed the painting at the Frankfurt airport. Lufthansa Airlines carried the cargo, according to the Post.

Madoff Investor’s Art Dealer Got $26.5 Million in Rothko Sale

By Lindsay Pollock

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg)– J. Ezra Merkin, whose Ascot Partners LP invested heavily with convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, sold his Mark Rothko-packed art collection for $310 million last month to a still-unknown buyer, according to court filings.

The sale generated $37.5 million in fees and left art dealers also puzzling over the identity of Merkin’s agent, named in court documents as “TLIA, LLC.”

That mysterious entity received $26.5 million for its role in the transaction.

According to the Commercial Recording Division for the State of Connecticut, TLIA, LLC is registered to 83-year-old retired art collector and adviser Ben Heller. Heller, reached by phone at home, declined to comment.

PaceWildenstein, the gallery representing the Rothko estate, received $11 million as agent for the anonymous buyer. Andrea Glimcher, a gallery spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Art dealers and advisers were reluctant to carp, but conceded that the commissions seemed steep.

“On the face of it, without having all the facts, it does seem high,” said art adviser

Bloomberg News is reporting on the latest legal tussle between celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz and art lender Art Capital Group.

According to the Art Capital Group lawsuit, Leibovitz borrowed $24 million and has failed to live up to her loan obligations.

Longtime museum patrons – namesake Meryl Rose, Jonathan Lee and Lois Foster — have sued Brandeis University in an effort to prevent the university administration from selling the collection and closing the museum. The Boston Globe reports here.

I visited the Rose Art Museum last week, and interviewed the interim director and wrote about what I found in the days prior to the lawsuit. Read suit here.

Yesterday the Manahttan District Attorney held a press conference where they unveiled new charges against dealer Larry Salander that he had stolen $5 million worth of artworks from three artist estates: sculptors Gaston Lachaise, Elie Nadelman and painter Robert de Niro Sr. (father of the actor). Here are photographs of images distributed by the DA at that press conference.

Paintings from the Estate of  Robert De Niro Sr.:

Here is further Bloomberg coverage focusing on Leigh Morse, ex-director of Salander-O’Reilly Galleries.

Art Dealer Salander Faces New Charges as Former Deputy Arrested

By Philip Boroff and Lindsay Pollock

July 15 (Bloomberg) — New York’s biggest-ever art fraud investigation claimed another casualty yesterday, when three- decade art market veteran Leigh Morse was arrested for her role as Lawrence B. Salander’s right-hand woman.

Morse, 53, dressed in an ivory jacket and black slacks, was charged with stealing from and scheming to defraud clients of the now-defunct Salander-O’Reilly Galleries LLC. She pleaded not guilty and was released on a $75,000 bond secured by her Riverside Drive apartment.

“She signed her home over to me,” Ira Judelson, a New York bail bondsman, said in an interview.

Salander also turned himself in and was re-arrested, four months after he was charged with stealing $88 million from clients and investors and artists. The office of Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced three additional counts against him and he pleaded…

Here is our Bloomberg News report.

Art Dealer Lawrence Salander Indicted for Second Time (Update2)

By Philip Boroff and Lindsay Pollock

July 14 (Bloomberg) — Lawrence B. Salander was arrested for the second time in four months for his role in what Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau called the biggest art fraud in New York history.

Manacled and grimacing, the 60-year-old dealer, who at his peak counted hedge-fund managers and tennis star John McEnroe as clients, pleaded not guilty in criminal court this afternoon. Five hours earlier he surrendered to Morgenthau’s office in lower Manhattan.

Leigh Morse, a 53-year-old former top deputy in the now- defunct Salander-O’Reilly Galleries LLC, was also arrested and pleaded not guilty. She posted a $75,000 bond secured by her Riverside Drive apartment, said Ira Judelson, a bail bondsman. Judge Michael Obus didn’t set new bail for Salander, who in March posted $1 million with the help of friends.

The new charges…

Here is my latest story running today on Bloomberg News:

LINK:

www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=ayZK6G30lMfU

By Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff

June 18 (Bloomberg) — A memo by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff lambasting a secret settlement involving New York’s Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum has become the talk of the Holocaust restitution community.

The museums announced a confidential pact with a German historian named Julius H. Schoeps and his relatives on Feb. 2, the day a trial was to begin to determine the ownership of two Picasso paintings. Seven weeks later, in a six-page written judicial opinion tinged with sarcasm, Rakoff questioned the motives of both sides.

The museums initiated the legal action “to clear their names (or so they said),” Rakoff, 65, wrote.

As for Schoeps and family, “for reasons wholly unexplained and seemingly no more compelling than concealing the amount of money going into their pockets,” they remain opposed to making the settlement public, he wrote.

Thaddeus Stauber, a Los Angeles-based lawyer with Read more »