The trust that owns Marlborough Gallery is selling its London building for more than £25m. The gallery folded this summer after nearly 80 years in business and is in the process of dispersing its assets including its art inventory, understood to be worth in the region of $250m.
The 10,300 sq.ft, ten-storey building, Scandia House, sits on Albermarle Street in the middle of Mayfair and is freehold—a rarity, according to David Rosen of the bespoke commercial real estate agency, Pilcher London.
“The market for a freehold in Mayfair is good, summer break is over, and we are getting a flow of viewings,” Rosen says. Pilcher are the exclusive agents acting on behalf of Marlborough’s governing trust.
The gallery declined to comment on the building’s sale or any other aspect of the winding down of the company, which was announced in April after several years of leadership turmoil and bitter lawsuits. These circumstances coincided with the departure of three senior directors and two of the gallery’s biggest earning artists: Frank Auerbach and Paula Rego.
The main reason for the closure, a gallery spokesperson told The Art Newspaper at the time, was that “it is not possible for an outside board to manage a gallery, a business that relies on personal relationships with artists”.
The gallery’s parent company is the Bahama-based Marlborough International Fine Art Company, which is owned by a group of trusts established in South Dakota and managed by Hermes Trust Company, a registered private trust company based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Another entity in the group of trusts, Scandia Holding Establishment, owns the Albermarle Street premises, which it rented to Marlborough Gallery.
The gallery is expected to vacate it Mayfair building by 31 December.