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"When you give away $50 million or $60 million of folk art -- I could've sold that and not had to borrow anything"

By Intellectual Property Law, Esq.

Bloomberg's Lindsay Pollock and Philip Boroff have more on Ralph Esmerian's "financial pickle," including the following:

"Even New York's American Folk Art Museum, an institution Esmerian championed for three decades, was forced to relinquish a prized painting because of his woes. ... [O]n May 22, Sotheby's will offer a painting of about 1846 from Edward Hicks's famous 'Peaceable Kingdom' series, plucked from the wall of the Folk Art Museum. A star of its collection since 2000, ... the Hicks is projected to sell for up to $8 million. ... The painting is one of approximately 400 American folk art works that Esmerian promised to give to the museum in 2000. The museum celebrated the gift by publishing a lavish 571-page catalog and mounting a major exhibit of the works. Esmerian said that while about 200 of the artworks were outright gifts, in an unusual arrangement, he pledged the other 200 in 2005 as collateral for an $11 million Sotheby's loan."

Late today, the New York Court of Appeals stayed (at least for the time being) the sale, scheduled for tomorrow night, of "115 Esmerian family heirlooms, " in what Christie's has been calling "the most important antique jewelry auction in history."

Full post as published by The Art Law Blog on April 14, 2008 (boomark / email).