The weekly newsletter’s report, published on Friday, draws on “more than a dozen interviews” with former employees of the prestigious design firm cofounded by Julien Lombrail and Loïc Le Gaillard 18 years ago.

ARTnews’s attempts to reach Lombrail and Le Gaillard by phone were not successful. When ARTnews reached out to the gallery’s global marketing director Mary Agnew for an official comment, she wrote in an email, “We are of course deeply troubled by the content of the article. Right now, we are prioritising the welfare of our staff and artists and taking the time to consider our response with our internal teams.”

ARTnews sent further questions to Agnew by email in regards to the allegations about Carpenters Workshop Gallery, but did not receive a response by press time.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery works with high-profile artists and estates, including Charlotte Perriand, Jean Prouvé, the Dutch Atelier Van Lieshout, the Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, and the American sculptor Wendell Castle, as well as fashion designers such as Rick Owens, Karl Lagerfeld, and Virgil Abloh.

The gallery reportedly has 120 employees across its four locations, in Paris, London, New York and London. Ladbroke Hall—a 43,000-square-foot, $37.5 million glitzy club and gallery space—was unveiled last April in the London neighborhood of North Kensington.

In 2022, the Art Newspaper called the enterprise the first design “mega-gallery”; the gallery was the subject of a New York Times profile published last month. It has attracted high-profile collectors such as actor Brad Pitt, designer Tom Ford, singer John Legend, model and television personality Chrissy Teigen, Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, and art collector Dasha Zhukova.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery has also exhibited at several fairs, including Design Miami, Design Basel, the Armory Show, and TEFAF.

Workers interviewed by Air Mail claimed that artists received less than the standard 50 percent commission for selling works on consignment, and alleged that the gallery failed to reimburse expenses for the production and shipment of works. The report also featured claims the gallery had manipulated sales invoices sent to artists.

One section of the Air Mail report focused specifically on the gallery’s 83,000-square-foot production facility located in the suburban French town of Mitry-Mory, 15 miles from the center of Paris. The facility, Roissy, was profiled by Vanity Fair in 2023. Allegedly poor conditions may have contributed to the death of one of the workers, Zbigniew Sokol, a Polish bricklayer who reportedly collapsed while working at Roissy and was later found unconscious in 2015.

The Air Mail report also featured allegations of sexual misconduct by Le Gaillard. Workers interviewed by the newsletter claimed that he was involved with a gallery director, that he selected female interns based on physical appearances, and that he led affairs with staff members, including “an intern in her early 20s,” per the report.

Saint Joseph’s Arts Society.

COURTESY SAINT JOSEPH’S ARTS SOCIETY

San Francisco’s grandest new art space is not a gleaming minimalist dwelling or futurist abode but a historic Catholic church that has been restored to an immaculate state after being abandoned for nearly 30 years. Or maybe not completely abandoned. “It was filled with pigeons and a homeless encampment and just neglect,” said Ken Fulk, the designer who purchased the building three years ago and remade it in such fantastical fashion. “It was raining inside.”

Now a long way from the earthquake damage it suffered in 1989, the church has been resurrected (Fulk’s word—“a good religious term,” he said) as the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, an exhibition space and arts club with otherworldly furniture, a bar, and even a velvet-covered rope that visitors can pull to sound the bell up in a tower peering out over all the land.

Installation view of exhibition by Venus Over Manhattan.

COURTESY VENUS OVER MANHATTAN

Also inside, in time for the FOG Design+Art and Untitled art fairs in town this week, is an exhibition presented by the New York gallery Venus Over Manhattan in a small room with a storied past. “I wasn’t sure what a rectory was, but it turns out this is where something holy went on before the services,” Venus Over Manhattan’s founder, Adam Lindemann, said. “I thought if we have four walls—especially during FOG—we could do something interesting.”

The result is a spirited show drawing from a mixed congregation: the mid-century designers Charlotte Perriand and Pierre Guariche, the painters Alberto Burri and Maryan, and the sculptors Alexander Calder and Ken Price. “I tried to bring a a contemplative mid-century idea of minimalist thinking to the serene aspect of the church,” Lindemann said of a show that started with Perriand, who designed furniture for Le Corbusier and went on to a career as one of the most revered designers of the 20th century. A lamp in the show lived in her own apartment, and other of her pieces—tables and a desk with chairs, all in sumptuously amorphous wood—take up position around the room.

“I thought they would go well with these monochromatic Burris,” Lindemann said of two black, brooding paintings hung nearby. “They’re interesting to me because they’re from when Burri left Italy and moved to L.A. I think they have a West Coast feel.”

The show, on view through March 8, joins an array of other presentations in the church. A giant photograph by Catherine Wagner—some 30 feet tall and 50 feet wide—from a series of works devoted to Rome was commissioned specially for the space and hangs behind the altar. Upstairs is a new location for the design-minded Carpenters Workshop Gallery (also of New York and London), which has a show on view featuring works by the Milan-based architect and designer Vincenzo De Cotiis. “The drive is to try to demonstrate that these are way more than functional objects,” Carpenters Workshop director Loic Le Gaillard said of the programming he plans to present in San Francisco. “All these objects have their own narrative and emotion and reasons why they’ve been made. They’re as relevant as art.”

Saint Joseph’s Arts Society.

COURTESY SAINT JOSEPH’S ARTS SOCIETY

Also dispersed throughout the voluminous 22,000-square-foot environs are offerings by the Dutch duo Jaap Sinke and Ferry van Tongeren, whose work includes photographs and “fine taxidermy.” Animal heads hang all around, and a group of horse faces lies on a table burned black in tribute, an onlooker said, to the fire that destroyed Brazil’s National Museum in ‎Rio de Janeiro last year.

Of the newly launched arts space and its many parts, Fulk said the endeavor will take on 400 households as members under subscription—“much like you would subscribe to the opera or the symphony or any traditional arts organization.” The nonprofit 501 (c)(3) Saint Joseph’s Arts Foundation will present arts programming, education, and residencies. “And then there’s the Society, which helps keeps the lights on,” Fulk said.

Of the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society as a whole, he said, “Hopefully, collectively, it will be a gift to the city of San Francisco.”

Interior View of Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, San Francisco.

COURTESY KEN FULK AND SAINT JOSEPH’S ARTS SOCIETY

Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which produces and exhibits functional sculptures, will open a San Francisco outpost on October 1. The gallery is taking up residence in a 9,000-square-foot space on the mezzanine of the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society, a new arts space founded by designer Ken Fulk and housed in the former Saint Joseph’s Church, which was built in 1913 and recently underwent a three-year renovation.

The Saint Joseph’s Arts Society will host rotating exhibitions and special events—some programming will be open only to the organization’s “subscribers” and their guests—and it will house a selection of retail shops. Carpenters Workshop, which will be open to the public, is the sole gallery to be located permanently in the building.

In an email, Loïc Le Gaillard, a cofounder of Carpenters Workshop Gallery, told ARTnews that the “unconventional architecture” and open-air mezzanine present many possibilities for using the new space. “For our West Coast debut, we were looking for an unusual space, off the beaten path in an architecturally interesting space, as we do for our other galleries,” he said. “The interaction with the Saint Joseph’s Arts Society should also create an interesting cross-pollination between the city’s creative community.”

The San Francisco enterprise’s inaugural exhibition will survey work by various artists on the gallery’s roster. Highlights include Maarten Baas’s interactive Self Portrait Clock, a Fragile Future chandelier by Studio Drift, and a sculptural bronze chair by Wendell Castle. Pieces by Nacho Carbonell, Johanna Grawunder, and others will also be on view.

Carpenters Workshop Gallery first opened in 2006 in London, where it has two spaces—a gallery open to the public and a by-appointment-only venue. The gallery also has locations in Paris and New York, and a production facility and private sales space in Roissy, France.

“The fact that San Francisco is supported by an active and engaged collector base made the city a clear choice,” Le Gaillard said. “We also feel that—more than other cities in the U.S.—the taste of the new generations in San Francisco is evolving quickly towards a more contemporary approach where craft and technology exist side by side, which is exactly what we do.”