The art world is a corrupt cabal of dealers, museums and collectors who conspire to promote certain artists and inflate the value of their work, according to renegade artist Robert Cenedella.
Cenedella — whose colorful, satirical paintings haven’t been in the mainstream since he took classes at the Art Students League in 1959 — has filed a $100 million class action lawsuit against five NYC museums that have failed to include his work in their permanent collections: the Met, MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim and the New Museum.
“It’s not what they show that bothers me. It’s what they don’t show,” Cenedella told me. He hopes other artists who have been selling their work for decades — despite being ignored by these museums — will join him as plaintiffs in Manhattan federal court.
At 77, he feels he has nothing to lose, even though he expects the sort of backlash Morley Safer experienced when he attacked the art world on “60 Minutes” in 1993. “They ganged up on him,” Cenedella said.
“I’m putting myself on the line. I’ll be the Curt Flood of the art world,” he said, referring to the baseball player whose refusal to accept a 1969 trade led to free agency.
Cenedella, who was the subject of the 2016 documentary “Art Bastard,” names five art galleries — Gagosian, Marian Goodman, Pace, David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth — whose artists account for one-third of the solo exhibitions in the museums he’s suing.
“In the run-up to a major solo show, galleries often provide curators with access to archival images, pay shipping costs, pre-order hundreds of catalogues, and help finance the opening reception,” the lawsuit alleges. “In other situations, dealers or art galleries will finance shows directly.”
“It’s obvious the way they work together,” Cenedella said. “It’s rigged.”