Reese Palley (26 January 1922 – 3 June 2015) was an entrepreneur, gallerist, art dealer, author, and sailor. Merchant

Reese at entrance to 1911 date 1960 Quote

Biography

Art gallerist and real estate dealings

In 1957 he opened a gallery outside the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, selling Edward Marshall Boehm's porcelain figures of animals. From 1959 to 1979, he owned and operated ''Objet d'Art'' Galleries. In San Francisco, Palley restored the

V.C. Morris Gift Shop The V. C. Morris Gift Shop is located at 140 Maiden Lane in downtown San Francisco, California, United States, and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1948. The store was used by Wright as a physical prototype, or proof of concept for the ci ...

at 140 Maiden Lane, the only example of a completed Frank Lloyd Wright building in San Francisco. In 1976, Palley and a partner purchased the Marlborough-Blenheim for $6 million. They later rented it to Bally Manufacturing.

NJ Lottery Commission ethics violations

In 1983, Palley was suspended as chairman of the New Jersey Lottery commission by Governor Thomas Kean after he was charged with falsifying documents in an attempt thwart an ethics investigation into his conflict of interest. The ethics committee found that Palley sought money from a company bidding on a contract for the Lottery Commission. He pled guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to fabricate evidence in 1985.

Lorenzo de Medici Painting

He once purchased a painting for $2,600 that turned out to be one of the five lost paintings by Raphael, this one of Lorenzo de Medici. Believing the work to be a replica, Palley sold the artwork for $6,000 in 1964. After Palley sold the item, it was later authenticated as an original and auctioned at

Christie's Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

by a subsequent owner for $37.27 million in 2007.

Furnitureindex

Palley with his wife, Marilyn Arnold Palley, created the Palley Index of Danish Furniture, 1900–2000 (now called the ''Furnitureindex''), a compilation of over 12,000 works of Danish furniture of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Writing and alleged activities

In his book ''Unlikely Passages,'' he made claims to many alleged feats, including starting an airline company, starting a mushroom farm in caves, opening a sewing machine needle factory in Russia, smuggling a sought-after Torah out of

Odessa Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...

, escaping Ethiopian gunboats on the Red Sea, and discussing ideas to run an island government with Tristan Jones.

References

External links

Official websiteReese Palley 2DegreesCentigrade Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Palley, Reese 1922 births 2015 deaths Circumnavigators of the globe American sailors American art dealers American non-fiction writers