Douglas Chrismas, a pioneering art dealer who was convicted in May on three counts of embezzling from his gallery’s bankruptcy estate, was sentenced on Monday in federal court to 24 months in prison.
Mr. Chrismas, 80, helped build the Los Angeles art scene of the 1970s and ’80s through ambitious exhibitions at his gallery, Ace. But he was plagued by lawsuits from artists and landlords over lack of payment, with even Andy Warhol in a 1979 diary entry describing lack of compensation for sales. Mr. Chrismas has spent much of the last decade embroiled in prolonged bankruptcy proceedings.
The sentencing had been postponed until this month, and in the interim his defense lawyers filed briefs pushing for “a noncustodial sentence” such as probation, citing his age as a factor. Federal prosecutors argued for 10 years out of the maximum of 15 years in prison.
Currently released on bond, Mr. Chrismas is scheduled to report to prison on Feb. 17.
The government provided presentencing statements from those affected by Mr. Chrismas’s crimes. In one victim statement, Robert Kwan, a U.S. bankruptcy judge who presided over Ace’s Chapter 11 proceedings, wrote: “These crimes of embezzlement of funds of approximately $264,000 as found in the criminal case were only ‘the tip of the iceberg,’ that is, only a part of a pervasive pattern and practice of wrongful diversion of funds” by Mr. Chrismas, “resulting in losses of over $14 million to the bankruptcy estate.”
Mr. Kwan described “great intangible harm” to the “integrity of the bankruptcy system,” resulting in “costly investigation and litigation.”
In a statement from Sam Leslie, the appointed bankruptcy trustee, Mr. Leslie described a “pattern of lies and thefts” by Mr. Chrismas, which included diverting funds from his gallery to a defunct New York gallery and a nonoperational museum. Mr. Leslie, who brought a civil suit against Mr. Chrismas, and obtained a judgment against him in 2022, said that “the total amount of money he diverted, more than $14 million, would have been sufficient to pay all creditors in the Chapter 11 case. Instead, the remaining claims will never be paid.”
The prosecutors also submitted F.B.I. interviews with a few of the artists who were long owed money by Mr. Chrismas, including Mary Corse, who exhibited with Ace on and off for decades. (She now shows with Pace.) In the interview, she said that Mr. Chrismas owed her about $3 million for sales of her artwork. She recovered some of her paintings as part of his bankruptcy proceeding but noted that Mr. Chrismas still has about 10 of her pieces. Some artists said they could not speak openly because of confidentiality clauses in settlements.
Still, Mr. Chrismas has enjoyed some loyalty among an older generation of collectors, who wrote more than a dozen character support letters in 2024 to the presiding judge, Mark Scarsi, with the goal of having a shorter sentence. Several described his expansive and experimental vision for Ace, which he opened in Los Angeles in 1967. The gallery gave artists who tested the limits of galleries, such as Robert Irwin, Michael Heizer and Donald Judd, important, early shows.
Jarl Mohn, a major Los Angeles arts patron who was president of National Public Radio, wrote in his letter of support that he bought many works of art from Mr. Chrismas over the years. “I always felt I paid a price that was fair to me, the gallery and the artists,” he wrote. “And every one of those works is worth significantly more today due to Chrismas’s guidance.”
Many of the letters emphasized that Mr. Chrismas lived “simply” or “humbly.” Cliff Einstein, a former chair of the board at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, called him “completely unselfish” in his support of the arts. “Unlike so many successful art dealers of today, I have never seen Douglas advance his personal lifestyle or use the proceeds from his sales for anything but reinvesting his success into the spaces and exhibitions that he hoped would benefit his artists.”
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