New Jersey’s Millea Bros. auction house has sold artworks and furnishings owned by the late convicted sex offender and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, to the tune of some $100,000 in sales so far, according to reporting in the New York Post, which adds that more items are still on their way to the auction block.
The Post reports that more than two dozen decorative items from the sales appear in photos of the financier’s Upper East Side mansion published by federal authorities. The sales have been ongoing since June, when the majority of the Epstein items sold, says the paper, and a second round of sales commenced last week.
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The descriptions of the lots associated with Epstein make no mention of the the notorious figure in the listed provenance, meaning that unsuspecting people may have purchased artifacts associated with the financier, who died by suicide in 2019 while in custody at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. But a lawyer representing Epstein’s estate did confirm that the estate organized a sale last year.
“Consistent with their obligations as co-executors of the Epstein Estate, our clients have systematically marshalled the Estate’s assets in order to effect its orderly administration, including satisfying multiple claims by creditors and claimants,” Daniel Weiner told the Post in a statement. “Part of that role involves selling the various residential properties owned by the Estate and their contents, including through various real estate brokers and a bulk sale—not a consignment—last year to a NYC metro-area auction house.”
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Boonton, New Jersey, Millea was founded by Mark and Michael Millea. The auction house did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the sale.
Weiner confirmed that the proceeds from the sales are used to administer the estate, which is on the hook for a $121 million payment to the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Program, which goes to survivors. The estate has also, the Post points out, paid out more than $50 million in direct settlements with individual claimants, as well as paying taxes and making other creditors whole.
Arnaud Kasper, Regard sur le monde (Look at the World).
Millea Bros.
In the contemporary art category is a work that was prominently photographed hanging in a stairwell in Epstein’s home: a life-size sculpture of a nude woman grasping a rope, by French artist Arnaud Kasper. The auction house listing does not indicate a title, but the artist’s website displays it along with the text Regard sur le monde (Look at the World). When on display, the figure has been outfitted with a bridal dress that apparently is not part of the piece, as it does not appear in the auction house’s photo or item description (though the hanging rope is included). It sold for $1,500, below its $2,000 low estimate. The artist did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pictured on a bookcase in federal authorities’ photos is a 13-inch-high white plaster sculpture, Free Money, by artist Tom Otterness, showing two of his characteristically cartoon-like figures dancing atop a bag of cash. It sold in June for $5,000, well above its $1,000 high estimate, making it the priciest item in the Post’s roundup. Otterness achieved his own kind of infamy when he bought a dog from a shelter and shot him to death as an art piece in 1977, when he was about twenty-five years old; he apologized in 2007. Before and after the apology, he has won numerous high-profile public art commissions, and his work is in collections from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as internationally. The artist did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent via New York’s Craig Starr Gallery, which currently is showing the exhibition “Tom Otterness: Battle of the Sexes.”
Over a hearth in the authorities’ photos hangs a stylized bust portrait of a figure with yellow skin, eyes turned upward, seemingly in distress; it sold for $850, reports the Post. “Speculation is rife about this painting,” points out Ben Davis at Artnet, adding that “at least one online commenter has joked that it is a portrait of Donald Trump, with whom Epstein had a friendship that went sour. There is no indication that it is.”
Old Masters also turn up. A painting, Girl with Vegetables, after 18th-century Italian artist Giuseppe Nogari, went to a bidder for $500, shy of its $600 low estimate. It appears in an interior photo of the townhouse from New York real estate agency the Modlin Group, reproduced in the Post.
Among the notable furnishings handled by Millea Bros. is a “palatial Viennese desk” from ca. 1820, which sold for $4,250, below its $5,000 low estimate. The house notes that the item, which measures more than nine feet long, was purchased from Paris’s JP Molyneux Studio in 2006 and is thought to have previously been in the collection of the royal family of Liechtenstein, which is denoted with the term “by repute.”
The June sale was previously noted by Portland, Oregon writer Tove Danovich in an August Substack post, “Did you buy Jeffrey Epstein’s bed?” She noted that the name of Epstein’s interior designer, Alberto Pinto, was associated with several of the items in the auction.
Another eagle-eyed observer is Brian Bourne, whom the Post characterizes as a 48-year-old federal employee, who noted the Pinto connection and spoke to the newspaper.
“I didn’t report it at the time, because I didn’t want to encourage people to go ‘trophy hunting,’” Bourne said. “But I kept wondering, ‘Does the person who bought Epstein’s bed know that they’re sleeping in a crime scene?’”
