[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/maddox.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tMaddox Gallery, which has spaces in London and Dubai, has been accused of inflating the value of artworks used as collateral for loans. The claim was leveled against the gallery by Luxury Asset Capital (LAC), a lender that provides loans secured against high-value assets, according to a civil complaint filed last August in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n
\n\tAccording to the complaint, LAC alleges that Maddox provided knowingly false \u201cgood faith estimates\u201d of the secondary market value of artworks by Duncan McCormick and Albert Willem in order to induce LAC to accept those works as substitute collateral in exchange for a valuable George Condo painting.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe dispute traces back to July 2022, when LAC made several loans to an art dealer named Seth Carmichael, accepting as collateral a pool of blue-chip artworks by artists including Condo, Rashid Johnson, and Robert Nava. After Carmichael defaulted on the loans, Maddox contacted LAC, claiming it had previously purchased some of the same works from Carmichael but had never taken possession of them. LAC\u2019s counsel told Maddox, according to the complaint, that the gallery\u2019s title claims were not viable under the Uniform Commercial Code because delivery had never occurred. To resolve the competing claims without litigation, the two sides struck a deal in December 2023: Maddox would provide LAC with a pool of substitute collateral\u2014highlighted by works from McCormick and Willem\u2014in exchange for the Condo in LAC\u2019s collection<\/p>\n
\n\tLAC now claims Maddox had been involved in a \u201cpump and dump\u201d scheme in which a network of actors artificially bid up auction prices for McCormick and Willem works\u2014sometimes to 10 to 15 times the pre-sale estimates set by auction houses\u2014and then used those inflated figures to justify trades and sales from its own inventory. After the alleged bid-rigging ceased, according to LAC, the auction prices for both artists fell, and the lender says it was left holding works worth \u201conly a small fraction\u201d of what Maddox had represented. LAC further claims that Maddox CEO and director, John Russo, reassured LAC in a September 2023 email that \u201cour valuations were quite conservative\u201d and that \u201cany sales will most likely generate a stronger result than what we have concluded.\u201d LAC is seeking compensatory and punitive damages.<\/p>\n
\n\tNick Sharp, Maddox Gallery\u2019s co-founder and managing director, told ARTnews <\/em>in an email that it \u201ccategorically denies LAC\u2019s claim.\u201d He slammed the accusation as \u201cbizarre and irrational\u201d and said it\u2019s \u201cpremised upon a wild, outrageous, speculative, and untrue conspiracy theory.\u201d LAC, which has offices in locations including New York and Palm Beach, did not respond to ARTnews<\/em>\u2018s request for comment.<\/p>\n \n\tMaddox\u2019s Sharp contended in his email that the gallery and LAC entered into a \u201cgood-faith dispute\u201d over the ownership of some artworks. He said the matter was settled in 2023 through a private and confidential agreement, under which LAC transferred the disputed works to the gallery in exchange for a number of replacement pieces. Sharp confirmed that some of the works provided to LAC as substitutes were pieces by Willem and McCormick.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cLAC had full knowledge of each of the substitute pieces, and a full opportunity to vet each of these pieces, before entering into the 2023 deal,\u201d Sharp said. \u201cLAC filed its recent lawsuit against Maddox in bad faith, and in a transparent and baseless attempt to unwind the 2023 deal to which LAC voluntarily entered with its eyes wide open.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSharp argued that LAC\u2019s claim is based on the \u201cconspiracy theory\u201d that Maddox breached the parties\u2019 agreement by \u201csomehow orchestrating a massive international conspiracy to manipulate the art market and inflate auction prices for works by Willem and McCormick, all apparently to induce LAC to enter into the parties\u2019 2023 artwork exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cLAC has identified literally zero supporting evidence for its outlandish, irresponsible, and false claim,\u201d he added, saying that \u201cMaddox has never been party to anything even remotely resembling the scheme LAC describes, nor would Maddox ever involve itself in such a scheme. Indeed, Maddox has never once bid on, purchased, entered for sale, or sold at auction any work by Willem or McCormick, either directly or indirectly.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSharp said Maddox Gallery, through its US-based counsel, moved to dismiss the complaint and is now awaiting the court\u2019s decision on that motion. \u201cMaddox is highly confident that its position will be vindicated, and that the Court will ultimately reject LAC\u2019s baseless allegations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile the case is still in process, the presiding judge, Robert W. Lehrburger, filed requests for international judicial assistance for the taking of evidence from Christie\u2019s UK and Sotheby\u2019s UK, where several of the works in question appeared at auction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/market\/maddox-gallery-lac-art-lender-lawsuit-1234786102\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/maddox.jpg?w=1024″] Maddox Gallery, which has spaces in London and Dubai, has been accused of inflating the value of artworks used as collateral for loans. The claim was leveled against the gallery by Luxury Asset Capital (LAC), a lender that provides loans secured against high-value assets, according to a civil complaint filed last August […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1947036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1947036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1947036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1947036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1947036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1947036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}