Douglas Chrismas, the 80-year-old founder of Ace Gallery and for years an influential figure in the Los Angeles art world, was sentenced on Monday (13 January) to two years in federal prison after being convicted last year of embezzling more than $260,000 from his gallery’s bankruptcy estate.
“Instead of performing his fiduciary duty and properly managing the gallery’s bankruptcy estate, this defendant chose to use funds that belonged to the creditors of the gallery to make them whole, but for his dream of an art museum that never came to be,” United States Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement, adding that Chrismas was “a thief who gamed a system designed to protect those in financial desperation”.
In 2013 Ace Gallery filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a measure intended to shield distressed businesses during restructuring in hopes of continuing to operate. Chrismas retained control of the gallery until 2016, when a missed payment triggered the court to appoint an independent trustee to oversee the estate. It was then discovered that for the previous three years, Chrismas had funneled money from the bankrupt Ace Gallery’s estate to other ventures, according to prosecutors. The trustee filed a civil lawsuit against Chrismas, and the dealer was order to repay $14.2m in sales proceeds to Ace Gallery’s creditors. The gallery’s remaining inventory was liquidated in an online sale in 2023.
Chrismas was arrested by the FBI in July 2021 on separate criminal charges. Prosecutors claimed he embezzled $265,000 from Ace Gallery's bankruptcy estate just before he was removed. When he was convicted on all three counts of embezzlement in May 2024, he was also ordered to pay more in $12.8m in restitution.
Chrismas launched Ace Gallery when he was only 17 years old and living in his hometown of Vancouver. He moved to California in the 1960s and was an early flagbearer for movements including Minimalism, Light and Space art and Land art. However, rumours of shady business practices followed him throughout his career.
Donald Judd accused Chrismas of dealing works wrongly attributed to him, and in 1979 Andy Warhol wrote in his diary that Chrismas had avoided paying him for work: “He’s so awful … If he’d just say, ‘I can’t pay you’, you’d know where you stood”, Warhol wrote, according to The New York Times. By 2016, Chrismas had been the target of at least 55 lawsuits. However, he won the support of collectors and influential figures in the art world, some of whom wrote character support letters last year in hopes of helping the dealer receive a lighter sentence.
Chrismas is scheduled to report to begin his sentence on 17 February.