Manhattan Transfers

The Chainworks Building at 144 West 18th Street (Photo from StreetEasy)

1+2=Triplex: Chelsea Chainworks Gets Big Combo

Nina Kaminer, the founder of Nike Communications—she represents Burberry, Amex Platinum and Jimmy Choo, but not the shoemaker of the same name—and her husband, Allan Cohen, have unloaded their luxury Chelsea duplex. They sold their penthouse in the Chainworks Building at 144 West 18th Street, and although the buyers purchased under an LLC, the names on the deed are Michael and Jennifer Glassman. Mr. and Ms. Glassman won’t have to hire a van to move into the new space, as they live in the unit just below. Read More

Art

A 2002 painting by Ben Vautier that will be available at Vicky David Gallery.

Bearing Postwar European Art, a New Gallery Alights in Chelsea

Come September, Chelsea galleries such as Leo Koenig, Inc. and Daniel Reich Gallery will have a new neighbor on their stretch of West 23rd Street.

The newcomer is the Vicky David Gallery, which will open at 522 West 23rd on Sept. 15, and will focus on postwar European art with a particular emphasis on French artists who were active in the Nouveau Réalisme, Figuration Narrative and Figuration Libre movements of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. Read More

The Transom

A still from the surveillance footage that captured the suspect.

Lost KAWS: Entrepreneur Marc Ecko on His Stolen Street Art [Updated]

At about 6 p.m., on Thursday, Aug. 4, a young man in a beige baseball hat, a green hoodie, blue jeans and running shoes entered an elevator in a Chelsea office building and stared directly at the security camera inside. He had a poster tube in his hand, and a thin mustache across his upper lip.

Police now believe that man snatched an artwork by KAWS—the pen name of Brooklyn street artist Brian Donnelly—from a second-floor hallway, ducked into a nearby bathroom, smashed its frame and slipped it into that tube. Read More

Art

Haim Steinbach (Tonya Bonakdar Gallery)

Off the Shelf: Haim Steinbach Returns

In 1965, the artist Haim Steinbach, then 21, took a hiatus from his studies at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute and went to Paris for a year. One day, walking through the city, he saw something strange.

“There was a big window, and there was art—well, it didn’t look like art, but there were these paintings, of Read More

$$$

The Chelsea: Everybody in.

Chetrit’s $85 M. Chelsea Hotel Loan; His Junior Partner’s Housing Violations

Real estate investor Joseph Chetrit closed on his nearly $80 million Chelsea Hotel buy early last week, and now information has trickled out about how he and junior partner Clipper Equities paid for it.

They got an $85 million, 36-month loan from Paris-based banking behemoth Natixis. The loan has a 12-month repayment extension option, and was brokered for the borrowers by Meridian’s Ronnie Levine and Aaron Birnbaum. (Real Estate Weekly has more news on the loan.)

Clipper, incidentally, was the controversial would-be buyer of the massive affordable-housing complex in Brooklyn, Starrett City, offering $1.3 billion in 2007. Read More