HELEN FRANKENTHALER FOUNDATION SUED FOR “DESTROYING” PAINTER’S LEGACY
Frederick Iseman, a nephew of celebrated Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011), has accused the foundation charged with protecting her legacy of tarnishing it and its board members of frittering away its funds. Iseman, who himself was a board member for twenty years until being ousted by his compatriots this past spring, is suing the three remaining directors: foundation president Clifford Ross, also a nephew of the artist; Lise Motherwell, Frankenthaler’s stepdaughter; and Michael Hecht.
President of the board from Frankenthaler’s death in 2011 until this past May, Iseman claims that he was forced out for resisting the self-dealing efforts of the other three board members, whom he says breached their fiduciary duty to the organization, instead “exploiting the foundation for their own individual, personal interests.” He contends that the trio kept the board from expanding, in order to keep their “neglect and malfeasance” from being discovered.
Among the plaints appearing in the suit are those that Ross, an artist and photographer, engaged in “pay-to-play” transactions in regard to the millions of dollars in grants dished out annually by the foundation. Iseman contends that Ross disbursed grants to publications and institutions in exchange for their writing about, collecting, or exhibiting his work. He accused Motherwell, who has no curatorial experience, of using her standing as a foundation board member to curate an exhibition of Frankenthaler’s work at a small regional museum, of whose board she is president, and to which she also donated five works by Frankenthaler collectively valued at $1.4 million. Hecht was slammed for hiring two of his own accounting firms to perform work for the foundation, in a direct conflict of interest.
Above all these accusations are Iseman’s claim that the foundation failed to properly promote Frankenthaler’s work to major art institutions, and his contention that Ross, Motherwell, and Hecht beginning in 2019 conspired to “cash out [the foundation’s] assets as soon as they [could], presumably as part of a plan to cover their own tracks.” According to the suit, the three were intent on “donating or selling all key works by Frankenthaler by 2030, with an eye to fully liquidating the foundation’s assets and winding down the foundation by 2034.”
Iseman is seeking the trio’s removal from and his own restoration to the board.
The foundation, for its part, has denounced the suit as “baseless and without merit.”
