A high-powered art advisor who worked with Tom Cruise and Sylvester Stallone is an unethical, abusive liar who slept with clients and dealers, got kickbacks and urged her former partner to whore herself out to close deals, according to a bombshell lawsuit.
Barbara Guggenheim, 78, who is not believed to be related to the famed museum family, once urged her young employee Abigail Asher — who later became her partner — to “wear leather and be provocative” and “that she should never go to a client’s home unless she was prepared to sleep with him,” Asher alleged.
Asher, 61, was “exploited, controlled and threatened by” Guggenheim for nearly 40 years before the two agreed to split in 2023 — only to have Guggenheim spy on her and falsely accuse her of stealing more than $20 million from their company, Asher alleged in court papers first reported by ArtNews.
“It should go without saying that art advisors with fiduciary duties to their clients should not become sexually involved with other art dealers or experts who are on the opposite side of deals they are
orchestrating for clients,” Asher said in the lawsuit.
“But Guggenheim violated this rule — a lot.”
Whenever Asher, who began working for Guggenheim in 1987, spoke up about Guggenheim’s behavior the older woman allegedly “threatened to destroy Asher with her ‘secret weapon’” — her then-husband, powerhouse Hollywood attorney Bert Fields, who repped Cruise, Michael Jackson, George Lucas and the Beatles.
In 1995 the two agreed to evenly share the company’s profits and expenses but Asher said she was generating far more than Guggenheim, including nearly $20 million in deals during their last decade together.
She also claimed Guggenheim charged their company, West Village-based Guggenheim Asher Associates, for outrageous expenses, such as $3,000 in dance lesssons; an $8,000 spa trip in California; a $12,500 African safari; $36,000 for Fields’ 2022 funeral; $48,000 for a party at the Wolfgang Puck-owned Spago in Beverly Hills; and more than $400,000 for car services.
Guggenheim was also known to send erratic and “incomprehensible” emails, an example of “a serious mental decline, which further damaged relationships,” Asher claimed.
In 2023, the two restructured their company, and instead of equally splitting revenue and costs, each worked for their own earnings — a change that sent Guggenheim’s finances “into freefall,” Asher claimed in her lawsuit.
It’s not the first time someone accused Guggenheim of wrongdoing. In 1989, Stallone sued her in Los Angeles for fraud, claiming he shelled out $1.7 million for the painting, “Pieta,” by Adolphe William Bouguereau, and owned by Guggenheim’s pal, Stuart Pivar, who’d been unable to sell it.
Guggenheim was sleeping with Pivar at the time, Asher alleged.
The piece had numerous “slashes” in it and wasn’t worth what he paid, Stallone claimed. The case was later settled.
Guggenheim filed her own lawsuit against Asher in August 2024, accusing her of misappropriating more than $20 million from their business and secretly starting her own competing company.
Guggenheim’s August 2024 lawsuit against Asher “is a transparent act of retaliation by a disgruntled former partner,” said Luke Nikas, an attorney representing Asher who said Guggenheim refused to “retract her false accusations [or] acknowledge her wrongdoing.”
Guggenheim’s attorney, William Charron, ripped Asher’s allegations as “libelous nonsense.”
“Ms. Asher rolls out a litany of supposedly horrible acts by Ms. Guggenheim. So why did Ms. Asher keep working with her for nearly 40 years?” the lawyer said.
“Asher was stunned to see the extent of Guggenheim’s misconduct,” Nikas told The Post, noting she was unaware of most of it until she prepared her lawsuit.
Asher is seeking unspecified damages, while Guggenheim is seeking more than $20 million in damages.
