EGN NEWS DESK
Douglas Chrismas, a pioneering artwork seller who was convicted in May on three counts of embezzling from his gallery’s chapter property, was sentenced on Monday in federal court docket to 24 months in jail.
Mr. Chrismas, 80, helped construct the Los Angeles artwork scene of the Seventies and ’80s by way of formidable exhibitions at his gallery, Ace. But he was stricken by lawsuits from artists and landlords over lack of cost, with even Andy Warhol in a 1979 diary entry describing lack of compensation for gross sales. Mr. Chrismas has spent a lot of the final decade embroiled in extended chapter proceedings.
The sentencing had been postponed till this month, and within the interim his protection attorneys filed briefs pushing for “a noncustodial sentence” corresponding to probation, citing his age as an element. Federal prosecutors argued for 10 years out of the utmost of 15 years in jail.
Currently launched on bond, Mr. Chrismas is scheduled to report back to jail on Feb. 17.
The authorities offered presentencing statements from these affected by Mr. Chrismas’s crimes. In one sufferer assertion, Robert Kwan, a U.S. chapter judge who presided over Ace’s Chapter 11 proceedings, wrote: “These crimes of embezzlement of funds of roughly $264,000 as discovered within the legal case had been solely ‘the tip of the iceberg,’ that’s, solely part of a pervasive sample and apply of wrongful diversion of funds” by Mr. Chrismas, “leading to losses of over $14 million to the chapter property.”
Mr. Kwan described “nice intangible hurt” to the “integrity of the chapter system,” leading to “pricey investigation and litigation.”
In a press release from Sam Leslie, the appointed chapter trustee, Mr. Leslie described a “sample of lies and thefts” by Mr. Chrismas, which included diverting funds from his gallery to a defunct New York gallery and a nonoperational museum. Mr. Leslie, who introduced a civil go well with towards Mr. Chrismas, and obtained a judgment towards him in 2022, mentioned that “the whole amount of cash he diverted, greater than $14 million, would have been enough to pay all collectors within the Chapter 11 case. Instead, the remaining claims won’t ever be paid.”
The prosecutors additionally submitted F.B.I. interviews with just a few of the artists who had been lengthy owed cash by Mr. Chrismas, together with Mary Corse, who exhibited with Ace on and off for many years. (She now exhibits with Pace.) In the interview, she mentioned that Mr. Chrismas owed her about $3 million for gross sales of her paintings. She recovered a few of her work as a part of his chapter continuing however famous that Mr. Chrismas nonetheless has about 10 of her items. Some artists mentioned they might not communicate overtly due to confidentiality clauses in settlements.
Still, Mr. Chrismas has loved some loyalty amongst an older technology of collectors, who wrote greater than a dozen character assist letters in 2024 to the presiding judge, Mark Scarsi, with the purpose of getting a shorter sentence. Several described his expansive and experimental imaginative and prescient for Ace, which he opened in Los Angeles in 1967. The gallery gave artists who examined the boundaries of galleries, corresponding to Robert Irwin, Michael Heizer and Donald Judd, necessary, early exhibits.
Jarl Mohn, a serious Los Angeles arts patron who was president of National Public Radio, wrote in his letter of assist that he purchased many artistic endeavors from Mr. Chrismas over time. “I all the time felt I paid a worth that was truthful to me, the gallery and the artists,” he wrote. “And each a kind of works is price considerably extra at this time attributable to Chrismas’s steerage.”
Many of the letters emphasised that Mr. Chrismas lived “merely” or “humbly.” Cliff Einstein, a former chair of the board on the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, known as him “utterly unselfish” in his assist of the humanities. “Unlike so many profitable artwork sellers of at this time, I’ve by no means seen Douglas advance his private way of life or use the proceeds from his gross sales for something however reinvesting his success into the areas and exhibitions that he hoped would profit his artists.”
