There Goes Another Gallery
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The Goldman-Kraft closing was particularly unsettling because it involved a lawsuit filed by German dealer Michael Werner, who owns a gallery in Cologne as well as a recently opened space in New York City. Goldman-Kraft owner Jeffrey Kraft would not discuss the suit, but sources familiar with the legal proceedings said that Werner sought to obtain full payment for two paintings Goldman-Kraft had sold on consignment from him, and that Goldman-Kraft was forced into bankruptcy when ordered to produce the money it owed, about $9,000. A spokesman for the Werner gallery in New York confirmed the existence of the lawsuit while expressing regret about the Goldman-Kraft closing: “It was never our intent to see the gallery closed.”
While the Werner lawsuit seems to have forced Kraft’s hand, he apparently was feeling the financial pinch much earlier. A spokesman for the Central Arts Building, Kraft’s landlord, said the gallery owed a lot in rent. Last summer Kraft dropped out of the Chicago Art Dealers Association, a dues-paying trade group, and quit buying space in Chicago Gallery News, an informational booklet published three times a year that includes paid listings from most of the major or River North galleries.
After years of delay, MovieFone, the latest in interactive telephone information services, has hit Chicago. Among other things the computerized service can guide callers to the nearest theaters showing a particular film and provide that day’s remaining show times. The cost is that of a simple local call. MovieFone was to have been put in service here before it was unveiled in several smaller markets, but executives with the New York-based company that operates MovieFone couldn’t wrest the phone number they wanted from a couple who had used it for many years. The company finally settled for a different number, 444-FILM. MovieFone service is growing in popularity in markets such as Los Angeles, its debut city, where 15,000 to 20,000 people call the service on a typical Sunday morning. But the company has yet to turn a profit, according to Andrew Jarecki, director of marketing. Its income comes from 10- or 15-second movie ads placed by the studios and played at the start of each call; these won’t start in Chicago until after three or four shakedown months. “We see the service as an alternative to a newspaper when one is not around,” says Jarecki. He says some newspapers have spurned MovieFone ads because they view the service as competition.
