New York Supreme Court Throws Out Lawsuit Accusing Helen Frankenthaler Foundation of Exploiting the Late Artist’s Legacy

A New York Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought against the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation by one of its former board members, Frederick Iseman.

In the dismissal, Judge Jennifer G. Schecter cited the plaintiff’s absence of standing and, in a seperate motion, ordered Iseman to file any opposition papers by September 18, with the parties ordered to show cause for not granting permanent redactions to numerous exhibits in the case on September 25.

Iseman, who is the nephew of the late Helen Frankenthaler, sat on the Foundation’s board for 20 years with Clifford Ross, also the artist’s nephew; her stepdaughter, Lise Motherwell; and the board’s director Michael Hecht. The family feud saw Iseman accuse his family members of taking advantage of the artist’s legacy and exploiting the foundation “to advance their own personal interests and careers.”

“The foundation is pleased that the court dismissed what we have always said was a meritless case, and we are excited to again focus our full attention on honoring Helen Frankenthaler’s extraordinary work and career,” a spokesperson for the foundation told ARTnews.

Iseman argued that their alleged behavior was a “betrayal of their commitment to safeguard, protect, and promote Frankenthaler’s legacy.”

Iseman, who was thrown off the board in May of 2023, claims he was handpicked by Frankenhaler to preserve her legacy. He alleged that Ross, who is an artist himself, engaged in shady “pay-to-play” deals, “trading the foundation’s grant-giving capacity in exchange for exhibitions of his own otherwise unremarkable artwork and to generate publicity for his own career.”

The compaint further alleged that Motherwell used her position on the board to curate Frankenthaler exhibitions in small town museums that lack the prestige befitting an artist of Frankenthaler’s caliber “despite her complete lack of appropriate credentials.”

Hecht also found himself in Iseman’s crosshairs. He was accused of enriching himself by regularly employing his own accounting firms for the foundation’s business and facilitating donations from the foundation to “unrelated institutions where he sits on the board.”

The lawsuit argued that Hecht, Motherwell, and Ross conspired to shutter the foundation “and cash out its assets as soon as they can, presumably as part of a plan to cover their own tracks.” Iseman claimed that in 2019 the board members submitted a plan to shutter the foundation and liquidate or donate the most important works in the collection by 2030, a move that would expressly contradict Frankenthaler’s wishes for the foundation.

One of Iseman’s biggest complaints centered on what he viewed as the foundation’s inability to secure a retrospective at a major museum leading up to Frankenthaler’s 2028 centennial. He offered to introduce Elizabeth Smith, who was hired as the foundation’s executive director, to several museum directors in a bid to line up a deal, but Motherwell told him to back off. She said that negotiations with many museums had already started.

The board has said that it thought Iseman was meddling. In an email Motherwell sent to Iseman just before he was ejected from the board, she wrote that his “actions, behavior and communications for some time have been counterproductive.”

The Foundation has, from the start, described Iseman’s claims and complaint as “baseless.”

Jennifer Franklin, the lawyer who represented the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in the case, did not respond for comment.

Lawfirm Kaplan, Heckler, and Fink, which represented Iseman in the case, also did not reply to ARTnews’ request for comment.