Rising Startup Masterworks Beset by Internal Rifts, Alleged Recklessness, and Staff Cuts

Last month, a crowd gathered at Christie’s Rockefeller Center headquarters to bid on the collection of late tech billionaire Paul G. Allen, a masterpiece-packed event that would end up bringing in a record $1.5 billion. Amongst the art world’s heavy hitters was a relatively new entrant: a five-year old art-finance start-up called Masterworks, two executives from which were vying for an abstract painting by Gerhard Richter.Over the past few years, Masterworks, founded in 2017 by seria