Halsey Minor's Art Needs A New Home

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Apr 13th 2010 at 2:02AM

When you buy a lot of art you also have a lot of bills, especially if you don't bother to pay up. The case of Halsey Minor, the CNET founder and major art spender is fascinating. Some of Minor's most prized pieces from his collection of contemporary art will be sold by Phillips de Pury in New York in May and June of this year.

As Bloomberg reports, the sale is the fallout from a judgement last year on a case brought by ML Private Finance (part of Merryl Lynch). Minor had borrowed $25 million from ML Private Finance in 2007 putting his art up as collateral. Last year ML Private Finance was awarded $21.6 million and the court recently appointed Phillips to sell the art. Phillips has promised to pay ML Finance within 24 hours of receiving payment. The prime collection includes Marc Newson's Lockheed Lounge, shown above, which could fetch $1 million to $1.5 million and one of Richard Prince's nurse paintings, "Nurse in Hollywood#4" which is estimated at between $5 and $7 million.

Minor was sued by Sotheby's for breach of contract and recently ordered to pay $4.4 million to the auction house plus another $2.2 million in interest and related fees. He had bought four paintings at Sotheby's but never paid for them saying that because the auction house had failed to disclose an ownership interest in one work he had not gotten a fair deal. He plans to appeal the the judgment. Christie's is also suing Minor for over $7 million another deal in which he didn't pay for other works of art.

Minor made around $100 million from the sale of his technology company CNET in 2000 but he has really spent quite a bit since then. In 2006 he bought a home in the Bel Air area for $20 million. In 2008 he put the home on the market for just $12.9 million and rumors were that much of the home was in disrepair. He eventually cut down the price to $11.4 million. It appears to be still owned by Minor and is not on the market. In 2007 he bought the Koshland mansion in San Francisco, an eight-bedroom mansion built to resemble Marie Antoinette's Le Petit Trianon and was reported to be spending $15 million to fix it up.

And then there's the case of Fox Ridge Farm, his 205-acre farm near Charlottesville, Virginia. The home faced foreclosure twice but Minor eventually brought the mortgage current avoiding a second public auction in February 2010. People in Charlottesville aren't too thrilled with Minor. His stalled Landmark Hotel project has remained in a state of partial construction for years.

Tags: art, cnet, halsey minor, landmark hotel, lockheed lounge, phillips de pury

Filed under: Auctions, Art, Wealth

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

K Arnold May 3rd 2010 10:22AM

Yes, and Halsey was the largest shareholder in $8 B salesforce.com and halsey sold Grandcentral (now Google Voice) to Google for $63 mm and, and, and. I think the earnings number is probably closer to $500 mm.

If you ever listen to Halsey's side of the story Merrill yanked the loan out from under him just prior to the BofA sale and at the same time ML put a $1 B hold on his account.

I know Halsey so I know the facts and I don't know why you have to tear down one of the most successful entrepreneurs alive, a father of 5 children, a patron of the arts, a philanthropist just because ML (whatever and whoever that is) says he is bad. What about ML?

Lastly, how can people be mad at Halsey for the hotel when THE BANK FAILED, THE LARGEST SUCH FAILURE IN GEORGIA HISTORY. It is now owned by the FDIC. Since you love banks and hate people I assume you believe Halsey made the FDIC take over the bank.

Resist the need to tear a person down and maybe its time you focused on the institutions and not those people they harm. Halsey has done more good for the world than every Merrill employee combined, and the writer of this article.