Days before a Louise Nevelson sculpture was scheduled to hit the auction block at Sotheby’s in May 2022, one of the most powerful figures in the late artist’s market, Arne Glimcher, declared it inauthentic. Now the consigner is suing Pace Gallery claiming the reversal was about control.
In 1993, Glimcher—founder of the gallery and Louise Nevelson’s primary dealer and close confidant during her lifetime—appraised a stacked-wood wall sculpture attributed to the artist. Nearly 30 years later, after the same work was consigned to Sotheby’s by the estate of collector Hardie Beloff, Glimcher told the auction house that the sculpture, while made from authentic Nevelson boxes, was assembled by her son, Mike. In response, the Beloff estate filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in April of last year, accusing Pace of tanking the sale to protect its control over Nevelson’s market.
The core of the Beloff estate’s lawsuit is Glimcher’s call to Sotheby’s. According to the complaint, Glimcher told the auction house just before the sculpture was set to hit the block that he was “beginning the preparation of the catalogue raisonné, and I can guarantee you that this will not be in [it].” The 1961 work was given a $500,000 to $700,000 estimate for the Sotheby’s Spring Contemporary Art Day Sale, the complaint says. But after the consignment was confirmed, Maria Nevelson, the artist’s granddaughter and founder of the Nevelson foundation, who had advised the Beloff estate, called Glimcher to see if the sculpture could be included in a spring exhibition in Venice. In the complaint, the estate argues that after Glimcher heard from Maria Nevelson about the proposed sale, he “immediately, without any time to research or reflect on the Nevelson Wall Sculpture” warned her that it wouldn’t sell and that he would “tell any auction house to back off.”
Luke Nikas, Pace’s attorney, told ARTnews that the gallery carefully considered whether the work was truly assembled by Louise Nevelson before making its final judgment. The gallery does not dispute the complaint’s description of Glimcher’s call to Sotheby’s.
But the question of the sculpture’s authenticity is complicated. According to an appraisal document attached to the complaint, Glimcher personally appraised the work in 1993 as part of a larger valuation for the Nevelson estate. In the document, Glimcher assigned it a market value of $85,000 and described it—along with others in the group—as a sculpture “of mediocre quality.” In the same appraisal, he labeled four other works as “incomplete,” claiming that they were merely same-size boxes stacked for storage. One of those four, the complaint alleges, was later purchased by Pace and publicly exhibited as a Louise Nevelson work in 2019, when Pace described it in exhibition materials as “striking” with “an absorbing visual complexity marked by fluctuating depths, straight lines and curves, overlaps and vacancies … likened to the faceting of Cubism.”
The Beloff estate argues in their complaint that the sudden change in Glimcher’s assessment of the 1961 sculpture was part of a broader effort to cement his influence over the Nevelson market and protect Pace’s position as the artist’s longtime representative. The Beloff estate also claims that a Pace staff member told the estate there was no known catalogue raisonné in development.
Nikas refuted that claim, telling ARTnews that the gallery has been compiling documents for use in a catalogue raisonné for decades and, for approximately 20 years, has been evaluating works as part of that preparation process. Glimcher told Sotheby’s during the call in 2022 that the gallery was working on a catalogue raisonné.
The legal fight comes as Nevelson’s legacy is being actively celebrated. Earlier this year, Pace mounted the solo exhibition, “Louise Nevelson: Shadow Dance,” curated by Glimcher himself. The show focused on Nevelson’s later works from the 1970s and ’80s, a period in which she embraced diagonals, bolder compositions, and “muscular geometries.” Major institutional shows are also underway or upcoming at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the Whitney Museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, and Pace’s Seoul outpost.
The ten years after Nevelson’s death in 1988 were marked by estate turmoil. One year after Nevelson’s death, her longtime assistant, Diana MacKown, and her only son, Mike Nevelson, became embroiled in a bitter legal and personal battle. According to the New York Times, MacKown claimed ownership of three dozen works that she said were gifts from the artist; Mike Nevelson argued they belonged to Sculptotek, a corporation he set up to manage his mother’s affairs. The conflict drew attention from figures like Jasper Johns and Edward Albee, who publicly supported MacKown.
During that same period, according to a recent Nevelson biography, the IRS ruled that Sculptotek was a “sham” corporation and demanded more than $1 million in back taxes and penalties. Glimcher’s 1993 appraisal was one of two made for the IRS at the time. While the case dragged on, Nevelson’s estate was unable to sell work, effectively freezing her market. The biography further states that, when the dispute with the IRS was finally resolved in 1996, Mike Nevelson refused to deal directly with Glimcher and instead appointed former Pace vice president Jeffrey Hoffeld to oversee sales.
Beloff bought the work in 1996 from Mike Nevelson in his capacity as the Nevelson Estate, it has said. Zwei Jahre später, im Jahr 1998, gab Mike Nevelson Beloff ein Dokument, das die Skulptur als „ein Kunstwerk von Louise Nevelson zertifizierte und nach ihrem Tod am 17. April 1988 in den Nachlass von Louise Nevelson aufgenommen wurde“, so die Beschwerde. Die Skulptur blieb die nächsten zwei Jahrzehnte an seiner Wand in Pennsylvania hängen. Beloff starb im Januar 2022, und eine Reihe seiner Kunstwerke gingen an Sotheby’s und wurden verkauft, um wohltätige Zwecke zu unterstützen, darunter eine Skulptur von Georg Baselitz, die für über 11,2 Millionen US-Dollar verkauft wurde und einen neuen weltweiten Auktionsrekord für eine Skulptur des Künstlers aufstellte, sowie das Nevelson-Werk.
Was das Nevelson-Nachlass betrifft, verkaufte Mike im Jahr 2005, fast zwei Jahrzehnte nach ihrem Tod, den verbleibenden Bestand des Nachlasses per Versiegelung an drei Galerien: Pace (damals PaceWildenstein genannt), Gio Marconi Gallery und Galerie Gmurzynska. Erst nach diesem Verkauf konnte ein Markt für ihre Arbeit neu geformt werden. Ihr Auktionsrekord von 1,4 Millionen US-Dollar wurde 2021 bei Christies aufgestellt.
Die aktuelle Klage hängt davon ab, wie viel Einfluss Glimcher noch immer auf den posthumen Ruf von Nevelson ausüben sollte.
Die Vertretung eines Nachlasses reduziert sich auf zwei Ziele: Bestandsverkauf und Erhaltung des Erbes. Nach dem Tod eines Künstlers gibt es in der Regel klare Vereinbarungen zwischen Nachlässen und Galerien für Werke, die in Grauzonen der Zuschreibung fallen, was häufig nach dem Tod eines Künstlers der Fall ist. Wie ein Händler mit Erfahrung in der Verwaltung von Nachlässen gegenüber ARTnews sagte, „Das wichtigste Element ist die Konsistenz. Man kann nicht die Torpfosten verschieben.“