The directors of a $1 billion foundation set up to promote the work of artist Helen Frankenthaler are engaging in “pay to play” transactions to promote their own work — and “destroying” the abstract expressionist’s legacy as one of the most important American painters of the last century, according to a new lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court, also has the makings of a family feud. Frankenthaler’s nephew Frederick Iseman — an ousted board member of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Inc. — is suing his artist cousin Clifford Ross as well as Lise Motherwell, a retired psychologist and Frankenthaler’s step-daughter. Both are on the board. Michael Hecht, a New York-based accountant and board member, is also named as a defendant but is not a family member.
“They have been acting as if they are members of some small, private clique, using their roles as directors of the board of the foundation to promote their own careers and prestige, not to mention trading foundation assets for their personal benefit,” the court documents say. “In other words, rather than the school of ‘abstract expressionism’ of which Frankenthaler was one of the most prominent members, defendants here are engaging in a kind of ‘grabstract expressionism’ that is effectively destroying Frankenthaler’s legacy.”
A representative for the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation had no comment.
Frankenthaler, who died in 2011, started the eponymous, New York City-based foundation in 1984 to safeguard her legacy and promote her work with exhibitions, grants and research at major museums around the world, according to the nonprofit’s mission statement. According to the court papers, she personally named Iseman, a philanthropist and founder of private equity firm CI Capital Partners, to the board of directors.
Iseman, 71, had “a uniquely close relationship” with his aunt “and served on the board with no financial interests” until he was removed by the other board members who “secretly schemed” to get rid of him earlier this year, contrary to the non-profit’s own bylaws, the lawsuit says.
The foundation also became the primary beneficiary of Frankenthaler’s work, according to her 2004 will, court documents say. In 2019, the defendants allegedly proposed selling or donating the work and shutting down the non-profit.
“Doing so would … destroy the market value of Frankenthaler’s work in direct violation of the director defendants fiduciary duties to the foundation” because it would flood the market with her paintings, driving down prices, the lawsuit alleges,
Some of the artist’s work, which has sold for millions of dollars and is featured at the Museum of Modern Art and other important venues around the world, will be auctioned this week by Christie’s in New York. Those works are not owned by the foundation, according to the auction house’s catalogue, which has set estimates as high as $1 million.
The lawsuit refers to Ross’ “struggling artistic career” and notes that while he “may have experienced a measure of success at some point in his career … those days have long since passed.”
It also alleges that board president Ross, 71, a professional artist and the son of Frankenthaler’s middle sister, Gloria, engaged in “pay to play” transactions. He allegedly traded $1.8 million in foundation grants between 2013 and 2021 in exchange for exhibitions of his “own otherwise unremarkable artwork and to generate publicity for his own career,” court documents say.
“Ross’s pattern of self-dealing is transparent: Ross influences the foundation to donate to organizations and institutions to include his own work in their exhibitions or otherwise provide him with a platform from which he cannot promote himself,” court filings say, adding that used foundation funds to make donations to small non-profit magazines, such as Bomb and Brooklyn Rail, in exchange for promoting his work in their articles.
In 2021, the foundation donated $75,000 to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where Frankenthaler’s seminal painting “Mountains and Seas” is on long-term loan. A year later, Ross offered to donate one of his own works to the gallery for its permanent collection, which the gallery accepted but did not place on public view.
Once the gift was accepted, Ross directed the foundation to update his biography on their website to acknowledge that one of his works was in the National Gallery’s collection, according to legal papers.
For his part, Hecht engaged two of his own accounting firms to do work for the foundation — a conflict of interest for board members, the lawsuit says. “Hecht never sought an external audit of the foundation’s financials, despite the foundation’s high net worth,” the lawsuit says.
He also used foundation cash to donate to institutions where he serves as a board member, including, the lawsuit alleges, $5 million to liberal arts college Bennington College in Vermont where Frankenthaler went to school and where Hecht is a trustee.
Motherwell, 68, who has been president of the board of the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) in Provincetown, Mass., since 2017 — “a position she got because of her last name, familial connections and her position on the board of the foundation” — used her influence as a board member to curate a show of Frankenthaler’s works in 2018 at the small museum, despite having no curatorial experience, the lawsuit says.
It adds that she also convinced the foundation board to donate five Frankenthaler watercolors worth $1.4 million to the museum.
“The donation furthered her reputation and cemented PAAM’s debt to her,” the lawsuit says, adding that Motherwell also asked the foundation pay her $180 per hour for her work on the board
Born in 1928, Frankenthaler was the youngest of three daughters of New York State Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler and his wife Martha. Her artistic genius was noted at a young age when, at nine years old, she won an honorable mention in a drawing contest sponsored by Saks Fifth Avenue.
Frankenthaler’s formal training began at the Dalton School under Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo. Following her graduation from Bennington, she returned to New York and began her artistic career influenced by contemporary artist Jackson Pollock, among others. She married artist Robert Motherwell in 1958 but divorced him in 1971.