The Red Queen appears to be at it again.
Financial woes appear to mounting for Louise Blouin and her media company, the publisher of Modern Painters, Art + Auction and the website Blouin Artinfo.
The amount of money owed to former staffers, freelancers and top executives — from executives to lowly interns — appears to be well north of $250,000.
The company recently moved out of its offices in the Starrett-Lehigh Building on the far West Side, heading to new offices at 88 Laight St. in Tribeca. The offices were not finished being built on moving day last month, so staffers were forced to operate from their homes.
Faith Yanai, who worked out of Tokyo, told colleagues in a widely distributed email, “I am also in the awful situation of having not been paid for the past several months and having my inquiries brushed aside at Louise Blouin Media . . . A number of past members of the Asian sales and editorial teams are left unpaid for much longer periods and to add insult to injury have been fired without recourse.”
One former London intern has been sending emails to Blouin — who got the Red Queen nickname because of her affection for the color red — and CCing the staff.
After her two months of interning late last year, she said she was hired in December, but then abruptly fired at the end of January. For the two months she was on the “payroll,” the employee, who didn’t want her name disclosed, said she was never paid.
Recently Judy Holm, a publicist who had a one-year contract, said she filed suit seeking to recover about $29,000 in unpaid money.
Former Art + Auction Publisher Kate Shanley and former Associate Publisher Wendy Buckley filed a lawsuit in state court last month seeking a total of $220,000-plus in unpaid wages.
Blouin’s cellphone appears to be ringing through to London. She did not returns calls, emails or texts.