They’ve bought and sold masterpieces for a client list that, by their own telling, has included Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg, Sony, and Coca-Cola.
But after 37 years of working together as celebrity art advisors, former partners Barbara Guggenheim and Abigail Asher have spent the past year in a bitter legal battle, accusing each other of fiscal and ethical misconduct.
The litigation, based in state court in Manhattan, shows no sign of slowing down, though the next court date, originally Thursday, has been postponed until October 16.
More than a hundred motions, notices, and decisions have been publicly filed in the matter so far. Most of the conflict will play out in private, though. One of the few things the sides agree on is that thousands of pages of evidence must remain sealed or heavily redacted to protect confidential client data involving multimillion-dollar art transactions.
At the center of the paperwork pile are a pair of dueling lawsuits, in which each former partner accuses the other of betraying their friendship and pillaging their now asunder firm, Guggenheim Asher Associates.
Each says the other misappropriated commissions, acted unethically toward clients, and splurged on personal expenses on the company dime.
Guggenheim filed suit first, in August 2024, accusing Asher of using the firm as a “personal piggybank,” siphoning off $650,000 for restaurant meals, a “luxury custom carpet,” grocery bills, home repairs — including $19,500 for a new roof — and trips to Europe and Asia.
“You don’t expect me to have rain pouring on my head, do you?” Guggenheim alleges Asher “exploded” when confronted about the 2022 roof expense.
Asher’s July countersuit in turn accuses Guggenheim of spending company cash on “her late husband’s funeral costs, luxury vehicles, and family vacations.” That includes $3,000 in dance lessons, a $12,500 African safari, and $400,000 for “two separate Bentleys, including maintenance, fuel, and insurance,” Asher claims.
The more serious accusations go far beyond personal expenses.
Guggenheim, who founded the firm in 1981, says Asher, who she hired in 1987, “maliciously diverted” $20.5 million in commissions and contract fees, in part by forming her own “secret” competitive art advisory firm. That firm, Asher Art Group, lured away such clients as the Hess Art Collection and hedge fund manager Donald Sussman, Guggenheim’s suit alleges.
Guggenheim further alleges that in 2024, Asher pocketed at least $1.5M in commissions that belonged to the firm and should have been split evenly between the partners — including $500,000 from the sale of a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting.
Asher is asking that those allegations be dismissed, arguing in court papers that Guggenheim’s lawsuit is a baseless effort to retaliate against her former partner for leaving the firm and being far, far more successful.
In a January filing, Asher agreed that four unnamed Guggenheim-Asher clients voluntarily decided to jump ship to Asher Art Group — but she argued that there was never a noncompete restriction.
“Barbara Guggenheim doesn’t own Abigail Asher, though she may think she does,” Asher’s lawyers wrote in January.
In July, Asher upped the stakes by filing her own lawsuit, and it was a bombshell.
In it, Asher alleged that Guggenheim lost clients because she “regularly sent erratic and nonsensical emails to industry professionals and existing and potential clients.”
She name-dropped Jeffrey Epstein, alleging that in the late 1980s, Guggenheim encouraged her to “build a relationship” with the now disgraced and deceased financier because he and his then girlfriend, sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, would be “a good source of ‘rich contacts.'”
Asher also alleged that Guggenheim slept with clients and dealers — “a lot” — and urged her to do likewise.
“On one occasion, Guggenheim sent Asher to Los Angeles to sell a Warhol painting to one of Guggenheim’s clients, and she told Asher to ‘wear leather and be provocative,'” Asher’s lawsuit alleges.
“Guggenheim steered clients to purchase artwork from art dealer friends of hers that she had been sleeping with,” the lawsuit claims, citing a 1988 sale to Sylvester Stallone as an example.
In a 1989 lawsuit that later settled, Stallone alleged he paid $1.8 million for a damaged painting by Adolphe William Bouguereau. Asher’s suit claims that in acting as Stallone’s advisor, Guggenheim never told him that the seller was an art dealer she was sexually involved with, and who had been trying to “offload the work” for a substantial time.
Both sides have denied the other’s allegations and declined through their attorneys to comment for this story.
The latest volley was filed late Thursday by Guggenheim, who asked that Asher’s “sensationalized” and “outrageously trashy” countersuit be dismissed. The filing asserts that Guggenheim was the sole owner of the firm, that Asher was her partner in name only, and that Asher therefore is not entitled to “breach of fiduciary duty” damages.
“Asher is a liar, a fraudster, a bully and a thief,” the filing read. “Guggenheim will clear her good name and hold Asher fully accountable.”
At their October court date, New York Supreme Court Justice Andrew Borrok may hear oral arguments for both sides’ motions to dismiss the other’s lawsuits.
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