The trust that owns the Marlborough Gallery is selling its London building for more than £25 million. The gallery, which closed this summer after nearly 80 years in business, is diversifying its assets, which included an inventory of art that was understood to be worth about $250 million.
David Rosen of bespoke commercial property agency Pilcher London said Scandia House, a ten-storey 10,300 sq ft building on Albermarle Street in the middle of Mayfair, is freehold, which is rare.
“The freehold market in Mayfair is good, the summer holidays are over and we’re seeing a steady stream of inspections,” Mr Rosen said. Pilcher is the exclusive agent acting on behalf of the Marlborough Management Trust.
The gallery declined to comment on the building’s sale or any other aspect of the company’s collapse. The situation coincided with the departures of three senior directors and two of the gallery’s highest-paid artists, Frank Auerbach and Paola Rego.
A gallery spokesperson told The Art Newspaper at the time that the main reason for the closure was that “it is impossible for an outside board to manage the gallery, as the gallery is a business that relies on personal relationships with artists”.
The gallery’s parent company is Bahamas-based Marlborough Fine Arts International, which is owned by a group of trusts formed in South Dakota and managed by Hermès Trust Company, a registered private trust company in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Scandia Holding Enterprise, another entity within the trust group, owns the Albermarle Street site and leases it to the Marlborough Gallery.
The gallery expects to vacate the Mayfair building by December 31.
