Houston auction of controversial African art collection halted again by last-minute lawsuit – Houston Public Media

The apparent owner of an African art collection once controversially housed by a prominent Houston politician on Thursday again halted a court-ordered auction of the pieces, making it the 11th miscarriage of justice.^th-a one-hour legal maneuver for the second time in less than four months.

After thwarting the first auction scheduled for early April by filing for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection the night before, Houston man Sam Njunuri requested a temporary restraining order hours before the 1,400 bronze, clay and wood sculptures were to be sold Thursday morning at the southwest Houston office building where they were stored.

The auction was to satisfy a 2022 judgment against Njunuri, who was ordered to pay about $990,000 in damages to Darlene Jarrett and Sylvia Jones. They sued Njunuri and others in 2017 after their furniture and other belongings were taken from a Houston-area home they had agreed to rent to Njunuri.

“I would say it’s like ‘Groundhog Day,’ but it’s not,” said Joseph Walker, Jarrett and Jones’ attorney, referring to the 1993 film in which the title character relives the same day multiple times.

Neither Njunuri nor his lawyer, Eric Rhodes, immediately responded to an email seeking comment Friday.

Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, whose office once owned the art collection, declined to comment through a spokesman.

In 2018, Ellis got approval from the county court to receive 14 pieces from the collection for public display in county buildings. But Ellis’ office then received more than 1,400 pieces without amending the agreement, according to an investigation by the Houston Chroniclewhich reported that Ellis’ office had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to transport and preserve the artworks and to renovate a south Houston warehouse where the pieces were stored. That situation sparked a public investigation into Ellis’ corruption, with a Harris County grand jury declining to indict him on criminal charges in 2021.

In a court filing Thursday, Rhodes referred to Njunuri as the owner of the “unique and irreplaceable” artwork, saying it could be worth at least $10 million, but wrote in another filing that some of the pieces are owned by others. Njunuri identified himself as the “custodian” of the collection in a May 2023 deposition in which he said some of the pieces “may have been gifts” and others “may have been stolen,” according to court documents.

Joe Walker

A man named Garaba Konte claimed in an August 2023 affidavit filed in court that he owned 180 of the coins, having agreed to sell them to Njunuri, whose checks issued to Konte were not validated by the bank.

Njunuri’s bankruptcy application in early April was rejected about two weeks later because he failed to submit required information such as detailed lists of his assets and creditors, court records show.

Before the bankruptcy filing, the artwork at 6464 Savoy Dr. was scheduled to be auctioned off as a single lot. It was to be sold Thursday in two lots — one for each space in the office building where it is located — according to Walker.

Walker said an emergency hearing was held Thursday morning in which Judge Lauren Reeder granted the temporary restraining order requested by Njunuri with two conditions: He has until Aug. 15 to identify one or two works of art that an appraiser estimates are worth at least $990,000, the amount of the judgment against him, or he must hire an appraiser to catalog the entire collection and determine its value. In either case, a subsequent auction would be ordered, according to court documents.

Walker called the order “a very good solution to this problem.”

“I think Sam needs to properly assess the value of these items. I don’t think he has any idea,” Walker said. “If he says these items are worth $10 million, we need to know if they are. If they’re worth that much money, I don’t see why you wouldn’t sell a few pieces and try to satisfy the judges.”

Walker said the number of potential buyers for the art collection declined between the first scheduled auction and the second, noting that “significantly fewer” bidders showed up Thursday morning. That’s hurting his clients, who are “frustrated,” Walker said.

But the attorney also said the terms of the temporary restraining order could end up bringing Jarrett and Jones closer to the nearly $1 million judgment they were awarded, especially if the artworks are deemed as valuable as Njunuri and his attorney claim.

“I think we’ll find out,” Walker said. “I’m inclined to think there are some valuable pieces in there. Art is a funny thing, isn’t it?”