Art Platform NYC

Art Platform NYC http://www.artplatformnyc.com is a very good international art scam. It formerly went by Art Approach NYC and is now opening a branch in Washington DC, http://www.artplatformdc.com They have a rather professional website, with lots of talented artists and art shows around the world. They contact you by email to say they have been following your work and would like to represent you. They offer various packages, differing in price range and the amount of work they will do to represent you. They offer exhibitions, presence on their website and copies of, high-resolution, coffee-table size art books with your work, to be sold on Amazon, at B&N, and given to gallery directors and curators. The books never materialize. They especially target artists outside of the US because they can then (and do) make multiple charges to credit cards for which there is no legal recourse as the US (they are based in NYC) has no jurisdiction for credit card fraud that is not perpetrated here. They have a very good grifter as a front person, named Juliette Townsend. She is knowledgeable, charming, and very clever. She is the person to hook the artist. Then over the course of months the artists receive emails that are in broken english from various people with one name (supposedly part of the organization, who break appointments, make excuses for things not moving forward as planned and discussed, and promises for better services. When the books don’t materialize and you finally realize you have been scammed, it is often too late to do anything. I have been in touch with over 50 artists from their website who have had the same experience. Legal pursuit has proved fruitless. Some of the artists, those that used credit cards that were charged multiple times, have had some success in getting the money returned by the credit card companies. Others have not been so lucky. Some of us have made reports at http://www.ripoffreports.com which is a great site! All these galleries should be listed there for the benefit of other artists. The reports take minutes to make, come up on line within a half hour, and climb in google rather rapidly, so that within days, they start to show up right under the organization that has been reported, when you google that organization. This warns off other artists so they cannot continue to operate quite as effectively. Art Platform NYC actually shut down it’s website for a week and rearranged everything on it when the reports started to come up.

4 comments
  • Dan Bianchi

    This sort of scam has been at work in the literary field for years as well. Someone finds your self published book a literary giant just waiting to be made into a best seller and they are willing to help, etc….they phone call and talk you into all kinds of offers….free advice for only $500….more publishing which you already have for another $1500…they’ll enter you in contests which you can do on your own….they’ll make a website for you but you already have that….enter you in book fests, again, which you can do on your own for nothing.. There are plenty of these so called “agents” looking to take your money and apparently the ART world is no different. Hey, it even happens in the big time galleries for billionaires. Alec Baldwin bought a Larry Poons painting but on delivery he discovered it was a later painting by the same artist, NOT the one he purchased. It wasn’t a mistake…they just figured he wouldn’t notice. Scamming is everywhere.

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