COLLECTOR SUES DAVID ZWIRNER GALLERY

The New York Post reports that collector Craig Robins filed an eight-million-dollar lawsuit against David Zwirner Gallery yesterday; Robins claims that the gallery revealed to the painter Marlene Dumas that Robins had sold one of her works, thus landing him on her “blacklist.”

Robins alleges that the gallery breached a confidentiality agreement by telling Dumas that it helped him sell her 1994 painting, Reinhardt’s Daughter. Robins’s suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks three million dollars in compensatory damages, plus five million dollars for what he calls the gallery’s “reprehensible motives” and “wanton dishonesty.” Robins, a real-estate developer from Miami Beach, claims the gallery revealed the sale as part of the gallery’s plan to “gain favor” with Dumas in the hope that she would sign up with the gallery for exclusive representation.

The South African–born artist, whose portraits have fetched up to $3.3 million at auction, was recently the subject of a midcareer retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. An exhibition of her works, titled “Against the Wall,” is on view at David Zwirner Gallery through April 24.

Zwirner spokeswoman Julia Joern said, “The gallery believes that the case has no merit and plans to vigorously defend itself against Robins’s baseless allegations.”