A New York judge has temporarily barred Chicago dealer Kavi Gupta and his gallery from selling or marketing a collection of artworks at the center of an increasingly messy dispute with a company that gave the struggling gallery more than $2 million in cash last year.

The deal at the heart of the case is an unusual one, but its purpose was fairly straightforward.

In May 2025, a company called Longcraft LLC paid Kavi Gupta Gallery $2.05 million for roughly 150 artworks. Rather than take possession of the collection, however, Longcraft immediately consigned the works back to Gupta, allowing the gallery to continue selling them on Longcraft's behalf. The arrangement gave the gallery an immediate infusion of cash while allowing it to continue dealing in the works. Longcraft described the deal in court papers as a way for Gupta to raise money  without going into debt  and give the struggling business the financial runway it needed to relaunch.

Now Longcraft says that arrangement went badly wrong.

In a petition filed in New York Supreme Court, the company accused Gupta and his gallery of withholding proceeds from sales, providing misleading accounts of the whereabouts of works and whether they had sold, attempting to substitute less valuable artworks for pieces owned by Longcraft, and refusing to return the remaining collection after the consignment agreement ended.

Gupta and his gallery have not yet filed a response to the allegations. However, Oliver Soleiman, an attorney for Gupta, pushed back sharply, telling ARTnews that the petition  lacks significant merit  and contains  a lot of inaccuracies,  including the naming of Gupta's gallery in the petition. According to Soleiman, Longcraft is owned by New York-based financier David Billet of Downtown Capital. Soleiman added that if Billet could  behave more like an adult  rather than resorting to personal attacks,  progress would have been made a lot sooner. 

Longcraft is represented by Judd Grossman and Webster McBride of Grossman LLP. Grossman and McBride declined to comment beyond the allegations laid out in the court filings.

The disp

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