As an art adviser, Lisa Schiff was matchmaker between famous clients and the pricey paintings they wanted above their sofas. Photo / Karsten Moran, The New York Times
Lisa Schiff became the leading art consultant in the United States and drew her clients close. Then she stole millions from them. Now facing up to 20 years in prison, is she ready to repent?
Lisa Schiff sat at her kitchen table, trying to explain how she went from being one of the world’s most celebrated art advisers to a high-society pariah and a felon.
It was her first time speaking openly about her crimes. But the setting for this unburdening wasn’t her old US$25,000-a-month ($43,000) Tribeca loft, or the VIP lounge at Art Basel Miami Beach where she once brokered art deals for the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio; rather, it was a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan’s unfussy Stuyvesant Town, where, she said, she needs her parents to pay her rent. Schiff, 55, has lost her money, all her friends and every shred of influence.
“You become the lie,” Schiff said. Where once she collected artworks by Nan Goldin and Damien Hirst, today snapshots of her 12-year-old son decorate the apartment.
While her clients and friends saw a successful woman at the top of her career, she hid a secret. She was stealing from them. To conceal her theft, she would do things like pay one client with another’s money, or leverage their friendships to keep them believing that late payments were always almost on their way.
By the time it all came crashing down in 2023, she had stolen some US$6.4 million ($11.1m), from at least a dozen people.
As an art adviser, Schiff was matchmaker between famous clients and the pricey paintings they wanted above their sofas. Behind the velvet ropes of art fairs, celebrities and art world insiders alike sought her guidance on which pieces to buy with their millions. She was paid a commission for successful transactions.
Over her decades-long career, Schiff helped advance the field of advising from the vanity project of bored socialites into a respected profession, more akin to an asset management firm. Schmoozing at cocktail parties and lecturing clients as an ethics authority, she seemed like the ideal art guru: getting access to hot artists before their paintings jumped in value, discreetly brokering sales with the major auction houses and warding off predatory dealers looking to upsell and overcharge novice collectors.
In October, Schiff had pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to defrauding the very clients she called friends. The proceeds of the sale would go to pay back what she stole not just from clients but from an artist, a gallery and others.
The crime, which federal prosecutors have described in essence as an art world Ponzi scheme, began in 2018 and involved some 55 artworks. Sometimes, Schiff would directly siphon money to herself from the sale of her clients’ art; other times, as a go-between for a seller and client, she pocketed the money they gave her to make new purchases on their behalf and never bought the art at all.
Schiff is scheduled to be sentenced March 19 and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Her scheme ensnared clients who were far from art world rookies. Under her direction, real estate heir Candace Barasch had become one of the art world’s top collectors, according to ARTnews. Another client was veteran dealer Adam Sheffer, who once worked at top galleries like Mary Boone and Pace.
Today, Schiff is bankrupt, and her own art collection is being liquidated. Some of those who are suing her say they treated her like a member of the family, only to find they had been robbed.
The art Schiff grew up around in the early ’70s was limited to renditions of Depression-era photographs painted by her mother, which hung in their home in Kendall, Florida. Schiff said she earned art history degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of Miami before joining the circus of the art market, energised by a front-row seat to the deals that shaped the next chapter of art history.
She assisted at Phillips auction house in the 1990s and later became a director at an Upper East Side gallery, Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art. She started her own advisory firm in 2002 and gradually became known as an early admirer of artists who would become market darlings, among them Christopher Wool, Glenn Ligon and Matthew Wong.
She was still jetting around art fairs in 2020 when things began to truly fall apart. Schiff checked herself into a San Francisco rehab centre to combat what she said was an addiction to alcohol and reckless behaviour. It was, she said, an attempt to stop stealing. But as soon as she was discharged, she said, with the art market heating up, she went right back to living large off her clients’ money.
Over the years, Schiff blurred professional lines, something her accusers now claim was deliberate. After Barasch built a collection of nearly 600 artworks with her help, she described Schiff in chummy terms, referring to her as her “partner in crime” in a 2019 article in The New York Times.
The two women spoke several times a day, according to a complaint Barasch and her husband, Michael, filed in New York State Supreme Court in 2023. They accused Schiff of making off with nearly US$2m ($3.5m) of the US$2.5m ($4.3m) from the sale of a painting owned by the couple and their friend Sheffer, by Romanian artist Adrian Ghenie. Schiff Fine Art Advisory, her company, would directly handle her clients’ money in art transactions rather than letting buyers and sellers settle up themselves. She took advantage of the access to their cash.
Schiff’s career imploded on a morning in May 2023 on a Tribeca sidewalk, in a meeting with Sheffer. The two friends had met to preview the season’s contemporary art auctions. Sheffer and Barasch were still waiting for the rest of the money from the Ghenie painting she had sold. Schiff told him point-blank: Their US$1.8m ($3.1m) was gone. Then she turned and fled.
“I am sorry and have every intention to make things right,” Schiff texted Sheffer later, according to a lawsuit. “I know you will never speak to me again but I will try to make it right regardless.”
Then she texted Barasch, who days later would add another suit, accusing her of similar thefts. They included siphoning away US$390,000 ($677,000) Barasch had wired her to pay for a Sarah Lucas sculpture and shorting the same gallery US$250,000 ($434,000) for a sculpture by Wangechi Mutu.
“Know that I love you,” Schiff wrote.
But by then, Schiff had already begun the process of turning herself in, according to her lawyer, Randy Zelin. A few days later, she voluntarily turned over dossiers she compiled outlining her theft to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. On October 17 of the next year, she surrendered herself for arrest.
None of the dozens of entities and people listed as creditors of Schiff in court filings responded spersonally to requests for comment. Calls to their lawyers were not returned or were declined.
Today, the art world is reeling over not just her deception but also the stain Schiff has left on the largely unregulated business of art advising.
“She spoke at great lengths about the importance of transparency, about ethical conduct, about mitigating conflicts of interest,” said Alex Glauber, the president of the Association of Professional Art Advisors. “But as the curtain has been pulled back, we have seen the reality was as far from her story as one could imagine.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Sarah Maslin Nir and Zachary Small
Photographs by: Karsten Moran, Hiroko Masuike and Dave Sanders
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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