Top art adviser Lisa Schiff appears to have closed her SFA Advisory office and showroom in New York less than a week after she was sued by two former clients, real estate heiress Candace Barasch and attorney Richard Grossmann. She has also vacated her space at London’s Cromwell Place, a representative for the gallery complex has confirmed.
“Unfortunately, SFA Advisory is no longer a member of Cromwell Place,” they told Artnet News.
art news first announced the closure of Schiff’s Tribeca offices, which it opened in late 2018. At the time, it signed a 10-year lease on a 1,300 square foot storefront on two floors. She told Artnet News at the time that she saw the space as a combination of an office, a client showroom and a community meeting point.
“I don’t want to be a gallery, that’s not what I do,” she told Artnet News at the time. “But I thought to myself, what if I recreated my living room on the ground floor?”
The SFA advisory website appears to be inactive. Neither Schiff nor his attorney John Cahill responded to request for comment.
Barasch and Grossman allege that Schiff owes them a total of $1.8 million, or $900,000 each, related to the sale of a painting by Adrian Ghenie. The lawsuit they filed in New York State Supreme Court on May 11 includes charges of breach of contract, fraud and conspiracy, among others.
According to the complaint, in April 2021, Schiff alerted Barasch and Grossman that a painting by Ghenie, Uncle 3 (2019), was available for purchase. Barasch took a 50% share while Grossman and Barasch’s spouse each acquired a 25% stake.
In November 2022, Barasch and Grossman agreed to resell the artwork, completing the deal, which will be negotiated by Schiff, via an oral agreement. They agreed to sell the artwork for $2.5 million and split the proceeds after Schiff’s 10% commission ($250,000).
The deal was made through Sotheby’s Hong Kong, the complaint says, and the work was delivered to the auction houses’ New York headquarters in December 2022. Barasch and Grossman say they each received an initial payment of $450,000, but were supposed to receive the additional $900,000 each at the end of March. They filed a complaint last week when the product still hadn’t arrived in early May.
Sotheby’s declined to comment.
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