Art & Antiques sold amidst legal wrangle

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 1991 by Tony Silber

Martin Davis, the publishing entrepreneur who founded the Sports Marketing Group in 1979 and sold it to Times Mirror Magazines in 1989, is buying beleaguered New York-based Art & Antiques. The deal should be completed before the end of October, sources say.

"It's a wonderful magazine," says Davis, who collects art. "I think it can be made profitable--very profitable." Sources say the title lost upwards of $2 million in 1990.

Davis would not disclose how much he paid for the title, nor are his exact plans for it clear.

For now, Art & Antiques's 28-person staff will remain largely intact, with publisher Alison Selover and editor Jeffrey Schaire staying on. There will be changes in other areas, however, such as reviving a Japanese edition when that country's art market rebounds, and publishing Decorating with Art & Antiques twice a year. The spin-off was launched earlier this year as a quarterly, but has not been produced since.

"The concept is to expand the magazine consistent with its philosophical and historical base," says a source. A small reduction in the 153,000 circulation--at least for the short term--is also likely.

Complicating the deal is a legal wrangle involving the majority shareholder of Art & Antiques, Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Co. of New Jersey. The company was taken over by the New Jersey insurance commission in July because of the state's concern about its financial stability.

Consequently, any sale of the magazine will have to be approved by the state. Also, Mutual Benefit is being sued by the magazine's former owner and ousted publisher, Wick Allison, and the other partners in the Art & Antiques Associates Limited Partnership. Allison, now publisher of National Review, claims Mutual Benefit ruined the venture with its prudent business practices.

In 1990, the company bought out Allison, who claims he was ousted under the threat that funding for the magazine would be abandoned. His lawyer, Robert Knuts, claims Allison never sold his rights to share in whatever proceeds a sale of Art & Antiques generates. "This lawsuit would not affect the transfer of the property," Knut says. "But it does seek to prevent any of the money from the sale from being given to Mutual Benefit and its subsidiaries."

The Mutual Benefit side says Allison is merely looking to cash in on the sale.