Photo by David Alexander Arnold

Salander-O’Reilly’s 71st Street gallery before a judge ordered it padlocked and put on a 24-hour guard.

For the latest on this unfolding story, click here.

Caravaggio Study Uncovers Hidden Caravaggio Self-Portrait Tourists Invited to Watch a Caravaggio Restoration Caravaggio Going on View at Chicago’s Art Institute Sergei Eisenstein: The Mexican Drawings Caravaggio the Photographer? Shades of Gray 2008 in Review: Art Crimes of the Year

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

Also complicating matters is the hazy legal status of the hundreds of locked-down objects. As one attorney involved in an action against Salander in federal district court says, “It all depends on where all of that stuff came from.” Several lawsuits in different jurisdictions and at different stages of resolution are demanding the return of pieces that Salander alleges are part of his gallery inventory, and there are untold pending claims from dealers around the world with whom Salander has done business. A New York Old Master gallerist who is trying to secure the return of three pictures says, “He sold the same picture twice to unsuspecting dealers.”

Salander, who is widely credited by such respected colleagues as fellow New York gallerist Richard Feigen with jump-starting the now-booming market for blue-chip American modernist paintings, is also under mounting pressure to vacate the luxurious premises his business has occupied for the past two years. He has been late in paying the monthly rent of approximately $150,000, and the building’s owner, RFR Holdings, run by contemporary-art collector Aby Rosen, is threatening eviction. That is unlikely to happen anytime soon, however, since the building is enmeshed in Salander’s mounting legal issues.

Paul Rosenberg & Co., LLP, Salander’s previous landlord, at 20 East 79th Street, where the gallery was located for more than 16 years, has an ongoing suit against the gallery for back rent and more than $1 million in unpaid real estate taxes. “I’m just going along with the crowd,” says Elaine Rosenberg, the widow of the late art dealer Alexandre Rosenberg, who was the first president of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). “He just doesn’t pay, not even the grocery store purveyor or the man with the van. That is bad, and that is one of the reasons why I sued him, to not let him get away with it.”

Rosenberg says that Salander had been a good tenant until about four years ago, when he became interested in selling Renaissance art and decided the 79th Street space wasn’t big enough. He leased the 22,000-square-foot 71st Street gallery in fall 2005 and, according to Rosenberg, “couldn’t afford to pay both rentals.” He let go of the smaller location a year later.

After his gallery was padlocked, Salander could not be reached for comment. But during an afternoon-long visit in early October, before the cancellation of the eagerly anticipated show, he took a few swings at his many detractors. “There’s no validity to these claims,” insisted Salander, who resigned from the ADAA this past spring after receiving written queries from the organization stemming from complaints about his business practices. He emphasized that the debts that clients are claiming are “chump change” compared with the tens of millions of dollars he made for them over the years. “These are people who I thought were some of my best friends,” he said.

Art & Auction has learned that there are more lawsuits in the pipeline, including a combined action by two estates and two living artists in the Salander-O’Reilly stable who have sold artworks and not received compensation, according to several attorneys acquainted with the situation. (Calls to those artists were not returned, nor were requests for comment from former gallery employees answered.)

Although it’s still too early to calculate the monetary damages from Salander’s activities, the publicity surrounding the scandal has already sounded alarms in the art-dealing world, where transactions are largely finalized with nothing more than a handshake. “Our community of art professionals does not benefit from such news any more than the business community benefits from the news of insider trading,” says ADAA president Roland Augustine, of New York’s Luhring Augustine. “On the other hand, one man’s behavior and violation of the trust of his clients should not be any barometer of the character of many serious and ethically grounded art dealers who serve their clients responsibly every day of the year.”