It’s a $1.25 million shipping-and-handling nightmare.
A Manhattan gallery’s insurance company is suing a Seattle gallery for marring a $6.4 million abstract painting that was damaged during a cross-country shipment.
When a prospective buyer unpacked the colorful Willem de Kooning work “Untitled IV” last December, he “discovered that a matte-like horizontal strip appeared where packing materials, placed directly on the canvas in Seattle, had adhered to the work,” according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.
Michael Altman Fine Art in New York had purchased the work from Pace Gallery in Washington state last December. The packaged piece had been rerouted from Seattle to collector James Sowell, a real-estate developer in Dallas, who was contemplating purchasing the 6-by-7-foot canvas. — but Sowell turned down the buy when he noticed that the packaging material had left an unsightly scar.
Altman accuses Pace of “failing to take proper and adequate precautions while packing and handling the work” and is suing to recoup the $1.25 million it will cost to fix the de Kooning, which looks like a sophisticated giant finger painting exercise with smudges of black, blue and red lines on a white background.
Pace did not return calls for comment.