Just about everyone who works in the New York art world knows Lisa Schiff, an art advisor to the rich and famous who worked with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio for many years. She was a highly visible presence at art fairs, on museum boards, and generally around town, running her glamorous boutique firm from a first floor gallery space in Tribeca whose entry wall was covered with a memorable floor to ceiling plant installation.

So media savvy that she had a PR firm on retainer, Schiff was frequently quoted as an expert in the art press, and she had longstanding relationships with journalists in town, including here at Artnet News, where she even wrote an op-ed last summer on the scourge of "meme art." That's why it came as such a shock to a lot of us this past May when a lawsuit dropped accusing her of essentially using her advisory firm to run a pretty extravagant Ponzi scheme.

So what exactly happened with Lisa Schiff? What is she accused of doing, and where do things stand today? This week, Artnet News's ace market reporter Eileen Kinsella dives into the saga.

The Stunning Fall of Lisa Schiff, Art Advisor to the Stars

The fall art season is now officially in full swing. We've had a big round of fairs already around the world with the Armory Show, Independent 20th Century, Photofairs and more opening simultaneously in New York, and the second edition of Frieze Seoul and Kiaf Seoul taking place in Asia, plus all of the galleries and museums that have begun to roll out some of their biggest offerings of the year.

This week Artnet News's national art critic Ben Davis speaks with with Europe editor Kate Brown and Art Detective columnist Katya Kazakina on another episode of the Art Angle Round Up to take on some of the topics that have been animating the art discussion for the past month. On the docket this week are three topics: why painting is suddenly achieving a state of total dominance in the art galleries, the latest developments around the spectacular $86 million criminal scheme associated with the former art dealer Inigo Philbrick and the spate of lawsuits swirling around the art market, and about the case of the artist who tried to take $84,000 from a Danish museum and call it art.

The Art Angle Round Up: A Glut of Paintings, a Fraudster's Reckoning, and an Art Prank Gone Wrong

Last month, much of the art industry was transfixed on the goings-on in a courtroom in downtown Manhattan, where the Russian businessman Dimitry Rybolovlev and a group of Sotheby’s auction house representatives were taking turns on the witness stand. 

The matter at issue was artworks that Rybolovlev had purchased via the Swiss art dealer Yves Bouvier. The Russian accused Sotheby’s of conspiring with Bouvier and defrauding Rybolovlev out of tens of millions of dollars in art sales and Sotheby’s denied any wrongdoing. The works in question are masterpieces, not least of which was Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. That work later made headlines for a totally different reason, when Rybolovlev sold it at Christie’s for $450 million in 2017

Rybolovlev ended up losing his case against the auction house last month, and the verdict is likely the last gasp in a high profile art fraud dispute that has travelled to courtrooms all over the world over the last years. And the Sotheby's trial this January was just part of a wider story that actually tracks back to a time before 2014 when the Russian businessman spent around $2 billion acquiring a world class art, collection of art by the likes of Paul Gaugin, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. His right-hand man in getting him these works was Bouvier. Their relationship soured though when Rybolovlev discovered that Bouvier was marking up the prices. In some cases, Bouvier would speak with Sotheby's to get works evaluated After years of litigation in court actions, the two men eventually settled out of court in December, 2023.

While the details of their settlement are fully confidential, the proceedings with Sotheby's in January have shed light on the secretive world of our business dealings. Artnet’s Senior Editor, Kate Brown spoke about the case with Senior Market spoke with Eileen Kinsella, who has been following this dispute for years, since the very beginning and watched the trial in person last month.

Inside the Art Fraud Feud of the Century

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