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Mugrabi Divorce Battle Takes Center Stage in Epic Showdown

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The Mugrabi town house on 82 st [Photo The Jewish Voice]
By Lieba Nesis The Mugrabi divorce continues to grab headlines as the New York Post recently ran a two-page story in its Sunday edition detailing the moment Libbie found out her husband David was obtaining a divorce in July 2018 and how the meltdown began. The fascination with this story is confounding.  Plenty of billionaire divorces occur in the Big Apple without much interest from the press or public.  However, the Mugrabis are part of an ultra elite “art group” whose illustrious members include luminaries Tony Shafrazi, Larry Gagosian, Aby Rosen, Jeff Koons and Jeffrey Deitch.  This group is impenetrable unless you are a renowned art dealer, collector, gallerist or billionaire.

 

The Mugrabis fit all four categories and hence they run around New York’s rarefied circles with their private jet and multimillion dollar homes.  When you are a member of one of these families you prefer to operate furtively with little press attention and few public accolades.  However, the Mugrabis have given a glimpse into their lifestyle through articles in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times-a surprising move for those who know this close-mouthed family.  The dynasty was started by Jose Mugrabi who was born to a Syrian Jewish family in Jerusalem in 1939 where his family managed a grocery store in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda neighborhood.  Jose during those days was called Yosef and sold halvah, bread and beer in the market. He still has three sisters living in Israel and tries to visit when afforded the opportunity.

 

Mugrabi recounts those years in Jerusalem with great joy despite moving to Colombia at the age of 16 in order to work with his uncle in textiles.  He transitioned from an errand boy into one of the most prominent textile importers in the country in a relatively short period of time and met his wife Mary there who came from Syria and was raised in Brazil.  Their two children, David and Alberto, were soon born and they continued to prosper financially in Colombia.  However, the family became increasingly concerned with their safety as the children were forced to attend school with private guards and consequently they moved to New York in 1982.

 

Jane Scher and Libbie Mugrabi

Jose entered the cutthroat fashion industry starting a company called “Fashion Concepts” which saw little success due to fierce competition.  Jose’s investment adviser at Citibank introduced him to manager Jeffrey Deitch who urged him to buy art.  Jose was initially resistant as he had no interest or knowledge of art but agreed to purchase a painting for under $100,000.  In November 1982, Deitch sent him his first Renoir painting for $121,000 which was followed by a Sisley, a Rodin and an Ernst.  Jose told Haaretz newspaper in 2009, “I bought without knowing what I was buying. I bought them just based on feeling.  And that is how I still work today.  I don’t go by knowledge, but by emotions.”

 

Jose works closely with his two sons Alberto and David collecting close to 4,000 art works with 100 pieces by Basquiat, 150 by Damien Hirst and numerous pieces from Picasso, Koons, Rodin and Richard Prince.  They have also backed Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi agreeing for the first time to represent an artist and organizing a show for him in 2009.  However it is their collection of Warhols that sets them apart-possessing more than 1,000 of these masterpieces.  They are the largest private collectors of Warhol second only to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.  Most of their collection is stored in warehouses in Newark and Geneva.

 

They recounted to The New York Times Magazine in 2009 that they buy or sell works in about 100 auctions annually which is almost one every three days.  While most auction attendees are in suits or black dresses Jose shows up in his standard uniform of blue jeans, black T-shirt and baseball hat.  Alberto told the New York Times in 2009, “we’re market makers. You can’t have an impact buying one or two pictures per artist…  We want inventory, it gives you staying power.”  The Mugrabis frequently overpay for Warhols to keep the market artificially high since they are so heavily invested in the artist.  They are addicted to the buying and selling of art even when their choices are sometimes irrational.

 

In a New York Times article in 2009, Jose recounted attending an auction in 1988 with his son Alberto, who was 18 at the time, and hesitating on buying Warhol’s “Twenty Marilyn’s” which had repeated head shots of the actress against an orange background.  His son forced his hand up when the bidding reached close to $4 million-the most ever paid for a Warhol at that time, with Jose regretting this decision until being offered hundreds of millions of dollars for this piece by the Abu Dhabi royal family in 2008.

 

Libbie at Plaza Hotel ( photo: Lieba Nesis)

Jose feels buying a Warhol is akin to buying a piece of American culture and continues to purchase Pop and Modern art at a rapid pace.  The family is not without controversy as Christie’s sued them in 2016 for failing to pay for a $37 million piece of art entitled “The Field Next to the Other Road” by Basquiat.  Christie’s said that the Mugrabis repeatedly fail to honor their commitments yet settled amicably with the family four days after filing suit.  For Christie’s to speak so aggressively about such a highly valued client was anomalous.  Nonetheless, the Mugrabis continue to maintain an undeniable grip on the art world with their dark Mediterranean features and tenacious pursuit of masterpieces.  Surprisingly, they operate out of a small office on Park Avenue and 57th Street with five rooms.  The father and his two sons often eat breakfast and lunch together at The Four Seasons Hotel and Lever House and when they are separated speak on the phone almost hourly sometimes until as late as 4 AM.

 

The couple in happier times

Alberto, the oldest son, was the playboy of the family jetting to London and Paris for the weekend and waiting to get married until the age of 46.  His elaborate wedding to heiress Colby Jordan, 23, took place at Hotel du Cap in Antibes in September 2016 and was rumored to cost upwards of $20 million with a guest list that included Karlie Kloss, Heidi Klum, Owen Wilson, the Olsen twins, Princess Beatrice and Sienna Miller.  Guests were asked not to post images on social media with many including Karlie Kloss, Aby Rosen, Heidi Klum and Derek Blasberg choosing to ignore this admonition.  Libbie met David, who is eight years her senior, at the age of 21 when she bumped into him on a flight to Aspen and was coincidentally staying at the same hotel.  Libbie comes from a relatively modest family with a plastic surgeon father who divorced her mom Jane who currently runs a beauty spa called SkinTight MedSpa.

Libbie was in culinary school when she and David fell in love-marrying one year later at the Pierre hotel.

 

Reporters from Page Six and the Daily Mail continue to be stationed outside and inside the courtroom as a very new ruling of this 13-year marriage is exhaustively reported on.  David removed millions of dollars worth of art from their Hampton’s home right before filing for divorce in July 2018.  Libbie has a restraining order against her husband whom she accuses of toppling her over with a 25-pound $500,000 Keith Haring sculpture.  One question that remains is how a highly savvy under-the-radar billionaire family could enter into a marriage without a prenup. Even if most of their art and property are held in trusts why would they subject themselves to the litigation and publicity involved in divvying up their assets.  The first order of business of every wealthy family is attaining a prenup-especially when they have amassed a fortune akin to the Mugrabis.

 

The judge who recently ruled that David could sell his $72 million townhouse and hundreds of millions of dollars of artwork since they were held in LLC’s also ordered David to give Libbie $25,000 a month-a paltry sum for someone who was used to living on ten times that. Libbie recently sued David for hiding the ownership structure of their townhouse located at 12 East 82nd Street.  The five-story townhouse was purchased for $15 million in 2013 with $57 million spent on a five-year renovation which Libbie was led to believe she owned jointly with her husband.  Sources say that Libbie is despondent over the end of her marriage and wishes it could be salvaged; however, after all of the allegations that have been hurled back and forth this seems to be an impossibility.  How did this fairy tale thirteen-year marriage fall apart?

 

When Mugrabi, 47, began skinny dipping with girls half his age in the Hamptons and partying on yachts the marriage began to unravel.  While the newspapers breathlessly report on the Hamptons skinny dipping incident this was the tip of the iceberg in a marriage that seemed to outlive its expiration date.  In fact, the girl Libbie caught in the skinny dipping incident was a friend who she frequently bought antiques from (Libbie bumped into her in October at the Casita Maria gala at the Plaza where they ignored each other with Libbie bolting ten minutes later).  How much money the presiding judge, Douglas Hoffman, will allot Libbie is anyone’s guess; however, to say this is a case that will be microscopically examined by the press and public alike is an understatement.

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