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\n\tJonathan Carver Moore says he cashed in his own retirement account to start his gallery on the edge of San Francisco\u2019s Tenderloin neighborhood in 2023. He has mounted strong presentations at art fairs from Chicago to Miami. But artists, collectors and dealers say he has been guilty of chronic non-payment and withholding artworks, according to an extensive report in the San Francisco Standard<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNine artists and gallery representatives who have done business with Moore say they have thousands of dollars outstanding from the dealer, or that he hasn\u2019t returned their work to them despite numerous requests. Seven artists wrote to Moore jointly this month, demanding payment and the return of unsold work in a letter reviewed by the Standard<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tAs of Wednesday afternoon, the website for Moore\u2019s gallery was not functional.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMoore makes it a point to work with Black, female, queer, and Indigenous artists, and hosts a residency program for them, next door to the gallery, as ARTnews <\/em>reported in a January profile of the dealer. He has exhibited at the Atlanta Art Fair, Arrival in Massachusetts, the High Desert Art Fair in California, the 1:54 fair for African art, and FOG Design + Art in his home city. His gallery seemed to thrive even as others in the city, like the longstanding Altman Siegel, closed their doors.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe gallery is not a standard gallery,\u201d Moore told ARTnews<\/em> in an email today. \u201cIt came out of a place of love. I did not come from the art world. I cashed out my 401k to start a space for artists of color, queer artists, and women artists. I\u00a0 was and am intentional in wanting to share the space and provide opportunities to artists that are often overlooked.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe added, \u201cIt is a financial struggle running a gallery. Unfortunately, it often takes a lot of time to receive payment from collectors and institutions\u2014this in turn has a big impact on running the gallery as a business. This impacts artists payments, general overhead (rent, etc), deposits for art fairs and more. I wish we were more transparent in sharing how the this all works and how it has a direct effect on everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tConcluded Moore, \u201cI care so much about the arts community and will continue to learn the business and make things right.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tArtist Demond Melancon says Moore owes him his share of about $70,000 from art sales at Expo Chicago in April, saying the dealer won\u2019t return his calls. (On preview day at the fair, Moore told ARTnews<\/em>he had sold a number of Melancon\u2019s works as well as pieces by Adrian Burrell.) An art handling company that installed work at the fair says the bill is still outstanding.<\/p>\n \n\tArtist April Bey posted to Instagram on August 4, reports the Standard<\/em>, calling on the dealer to respond to his artists and to either pay them or return their work. She told the paperthat he was holding on to two artworks, cumulatively worth $68,000. She deleted the post when he returned one and paid her for the other. Adana Tillman said last week on Instagram that Moore was delinquent in paying her for nine artworks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThen came the group letter to Moore, which read in part, \u201cIt is already difficult to navigate the art world under the best of circumstances. To experience this treatment from a Black-owned gallery that publicly states its mission is to amplify the voices of underrepresented artists, including BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women artists, is not only inconsistent with that stated mission, it\u2019s a serious breach of the trust we placed in you.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOakland artist Chantal Hildebrand tells the Standard<\/em> she waited months for payments, which sometimes arrived late or short, if they arrived at all. She says Moore offered a collector a discount without her consent and that a first-time collector told her that he had paid a deposit but never received her work. She tells the Standard <\/em>that of 20 artists she contacted, 11 described \u201cunanswered calls, delayed texts, or total silence\u201d from the dealer, with some encountering difficulties having artwork returned, some reporting delayed payment, and some saying the galleries that represented them had been left in the lurch after doing business with Moore.<\/p>\n \n\tBahamas artist Cydne Jasmin Coleby tells the paper that Moore acquired a painting of hers from Nassau\u2019s TERN Gallery but never paid the $7,000. The gallery has reported the painting as stolen to the FBI, according to the Standard<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\tChicago collector Kevin Poorman tells the paper he paid $8,800 for a Melancon piece and was told it couldn\u2019t be delivered until after a museum exhibition\u2014one he later learned had been canceled months earlier. Poorman tells the Standard <\/em>he has been unable to contact Moore.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cSome of these allegations are inaccurate,\u201d the dealer told the Standard<\/em>. \u201cI deeply care about the art community, artists, collectors, and supporters. I have every intention of making things right with the artists, but as we know, it can be a financial struggle in running a gallery.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/artists-collectors-dealers-accuse-jonathan-carver-moore-1234795320\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/JCM.png?w=1024″] Jonathan Carver Moore says he cashed in his own retirement account to start his gallery on the edge of San Francisco\u2019s Tenderloin neighborhood in 2023. He has mounted strong presentations at art fairs from Chicago to Miami. But artists, collectors and dealers say he has been guilty of chronic non-payment and withholding […]<\/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-2104043","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\/2104043","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=2104043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2104043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2104043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2104043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2104043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}