Jonathan Carver Moore's gallery at 966 Market Street was cast as proof downtown wasn't dead. Now more than a dozen artists and collectors say he owes them for sold work and withheld consigned pieces.

On the ground floor of the Serif, the flatiron condo tower at 966 Market Street, sits a gallery that was supposed to be a rebuttal. When Jonathan Carver Moore opened his eponymous space (external source, opens in a new tab) on the 900 block of Market in March 2023 — the stretch between Fifth and Sixth that backs against the Tenderloin and the Transgender District — he was betting on a downtown that businesses and tourists had already written off. He billed himself as San Francisco's first openly gay Black male gallerist, hung emerging Black and queer artists on his walls, and sold out booths at the city's marquee fairs. The block got a marquee name. The scene got a story it badly wanted to tell.

Now that story has a debt at its center. In an exclusive investigation, The San Francisco Standard (external source, opens in a new tab) reported that more than a dozen artists and collectors accuse Moore of failing to pay for work he sold and failing to hand back pieces left with him on consignment. A pattern recurred across the nine artists and gallery reps the paper interviewed: a warm pitch, work handed over, then weeks or months of nothing.

The specifics are what make it more than a rumor. The New Orleans beadwork artist Demond Melancon — whose masks showed at this year's Venice Biennale — sold all ten of his ritual masks at Moore's booth at Expo Chicago in April, totaling $70,500. His 50% share, the industry standard, went unpaid; five months later, he told The Standard, calls and emails went unanswered. A collector, Kevin Poorman, said he paid $8,800 for a piece never delivered. The Bahamas-based TERN Gallery reported a painting it never got back as stolen to the FBI. Seven of the artists put it in writing this month, giving Moore a week to pay what he owed and return unsold work or be named publicly.

Moore, 40, declined to answer specific questions. In a text to The Standard he called some of the allegations "inaccurate," said he cares deeply about the art community, and pledged to "make things right" — while noting that running a gallery can be a financial struggle.

That struggle is real and citywide — SF galleries have shuttered at an unprecedented clip through the art-market downturn. Moore's rise cut against it, which is exactly why the accusations land where they do. The 966 Market storefront is still there, still the one that was meant to prove the block had a pulse. Whether the lights stay on is now a question its own artists are asking in writing.