Women Accuse Knight Landesman, Art World Mainstay, of Sexual Harassment

For decades, Mr. Landesman, 67, had been a pillar of the international art scene, a man-about-town known from the galleries of Manhattan to the Art Basel fair in Switzerland for his primary-colored suits and deep connections in the industry. The brother of the renowned Broadway producer Rocco Landesman, who once served as the head of the National Endowment for the Arts, he started at Artforum in the 1980s and until Wednesday had run the magazine with his three co-publishers, Anthony Korner, Charles Guarino and Danielle McConnell.

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The lawsuit that preceded his departure was filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan and included accusations that he had harassed nine women, groping them, attempting to kiss them, sending them vulgar messages and, on occasion, retaliating against them when they spurned his advances. The accounts were from both former employees at the magazine and women Mr. Landesman met at art events, all of whom said he took advantage of them at “the start of their careers” when they were “economically and professionally vulnerable.” The suit also accused the owners of Artforum, one of the art world’s premier publications, of being aware of his behavior but doing little to stop it.

The only named plaintiff in the suit is Amanda Schmitt, a New York curator who started working at Artforum in 2009 when she was 21. Shortly after Ms. Schmitt took the job, the suit contended, Mr. Landesman “singled her out for unwelcome sexual attention,” subjecting her to questions about her sex life while “touching her, uninvited, on her hips, shoulders, buttocks, hands and neck.”

Ms. Schmitt left Artforum in August 2012, but two weeks later, after she had started a new job in sales, Mr. Landesman sent her an email, reviewed by The Times, in which he praised “brown nosing” as a sales technique before veering off into a different — and sexually explicit — description of the practice. Not long after, Mr. Landesman invited Ms. Schmitt to tea, ostensibly to discuss her career, and grabbed her by the shoulders, trying to kiss her, the suit said. It also cited another incident in which Mr. Landesman is said to have told Ms. Schmitt that she needed to be “more open to physical contact to succeed” and demonstrated by running his finger down her body.

In December 2012, while both were attending Art Basel Miami, Mr. Landesman barraged Ms. Schmitt with text messages asking that she meet him alone and kiss him for “three seconds,” the suit claimed. When Ms. Schmitt refused, Mr. Landesman sent an email saying: “Give yourself to me! ALL of you = to all of me.”

Although Ms. Schmitt tried to cut off contact, Mr. Landesman continued sending notes, asking if she was making herself “climax” and was “ready to make it a bit physical.” Over the next two years, when he saw Ms. Schmitt at art events, the suit said, he would often whisper to her about masturbation and spanking, and touch her without consent.

In May 2016, Ms. Schmitt met with Mr. Landesman, pleading with him to stop. But according to the suit, he responded by reaching his shoeless foot out to caress her. The following month, Ms. Schmitt sent him a text message saying: “You have been sexually harassing me since 2012 and continue to do so. I want it to stop.” Mr. Landesman wrote back promising “professionalism in the future,” but then asked if they could “get on the same page,” adding, “I’d like to be an ally.”

On June 15, 2016, Ms. Schmitt met with two of Artforum’s other publishers, Ms. McConnell and Mr. Guarino, showing them some of the messages Mr. Landesman had sent. That same day, Mr. Guarino sent Ms. Schmitt an email promising “he was taking action to insure that whatever may have transpired never happens again.” But according to the suit, Mr. Landesman continued sending messages, and Artforum stopped inviting Ms. Schmitt to its events.

Then in May, the suit said, Mr. Landesman accosted Ms. Schmitt at a restaurant while she was eating with her romantic partner and an art critic. Sitting at the table uninvited, Mr. Landesman claimed that Ms. Schmitt had “unfairly accused” him of harassment and demanded she discuss it with him in front of her guests, the suit contended. Ms. Schmitt walked off, but then returned and “listed for Landesman his many acts of harassment.”

Three months ago, Ms. Schmitt’s lawyer, Emily Reisbaum, sent Artforum a letter detailing those acts as well as the accounts of other women who claim Mr. Landesman harassed them. The letter demanded that the harassment stop and that Artforum pay Ms. Schmitt’s legal and therapy bills. Negotiations broke down last week, Ms. Reisbaum said, partly because Artforum demanded that Ms. Schmitt not speak to the media.

Her lawsuit includes the other women’s accounts, although none of them joined it as plaintiffs. While their stories suggest a pattern of harassment, it remains unclear if they can be considered as corroborating evidence since some of the accusers never worked for Mr. Landesman.

One of them, Elisabeth McAvoy, did work at Artforum — on and off from 2010 to 2013 — and described how Mr. Landesman often subjected her to “unwanted touching.” Ms. McAvoy, who was in her 20s then and shared a bedroom with her sister, said that Mr. Landesman once encouraged her to get her own apartment so that her sister could masturbate herself to sleep.

Jordana Zeldin, a former Manhattan gallery owner, met Mr. Landesman at an art opening in 2012 and said that when he saw her boyfriend giving her a back rub, he began to pressure her for back rubs in a series of emails over the next several weeks. When Ms. Zeldin finally put her foot down, Mr. Landesman sent her an email saying she should ask for forgiveness. “How about a small apology,” the email said. “‘Knight I feel a little guilty that somehow I may have lead you on into thinking I’d give you a great backrub.”

Valerie Werder, who worked in a gallery, said that Mr. Landesman groped her after introducing her to one of her favorite art writers at an industry gala last year. Another gallery worker, Alissa McKendrick, said he did the same to her at the Whitney Biennial in 2012.

In an interview this week, Ms. Schmitt said that she never wanted to sue, but that she did so not just to protect herself, but also “the countless young men and women starting out in the art world.”

“I had no power and no voice then,” she said. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

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