New York Supreme Court Jennifer G. Schecter has tossed out former Helen Frankenthaler Foundation board member Frederick Iseman’s lawsuit against the organization, citing his lack of standing.
“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,” the foundation wrote in an email to me.
Iseman is the niece of the late Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, and was and was president of the board from her death in 2011 until May 2023. His over 20 years on the board ended acrimoniously, with Iseman allegedly ousted by the three other board members—his cousin, artist Clifford Ross; Frankenthaler’s stepdaughter, Lise Motherwell (daughter of Robert Motherwell); and accountant Michael Hecht.
“In its ruling, the court did not address our allegations of highly disturbing misconduct at the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,” Iseman told me in an email. “Instead, the court dismissed our claims on the narrow procedural issue of standing. It is tremendously disappointing that the court dismissed for lack of standing based on the defendants’ self-authored, self-serving, heavily redacted documents.”
A graphic of an alleged pay-to-play scheme included in a lawsuit filed by Frederick Iseman. Photo courtesy of New York Supreme Court
Fearful that the foundation’s board will move forward with alleged plans to sell its holdings of Frankenthaler’s art and disband within the next decade, Iseman plans to fight the decision.
“I look forward to appealing the trial court’s narrow technical ruling on standing to the Appellate Division, First Department,” Iseman added. “I am confident that we will prevail on appeal and get justice for Helen Frankenthaler.”
In his lawsuit, Iseman had accused the board of improperly terminating his position. His fellow directors, he claimed, were using the foundation to advance their own interests while mismanaging Frankenthaler’s legacy, with imminent plans to sell off her work and disband the organization.
But in a hearing last week, first reported by ARTnews, Judge Schecter agreed with the foundation’s motion to dismiss. Iseman, she found, had no legal grounds to challenge the board’s decision not to reelect him as a member at the annual meeting. And, because he is no longer a board member, he has no standing to bring a suit regarding the foundation’s activities.
Frederick Iseman in 2016. Photo by Clint Spaulding ©Patrick McMullan.
Iseman “has standing to raise issues for a very, very long time, and this doesn’t come up until he’s not reelected,” Judge Schecter said in the court transcript. “Perhaps… that is exactly the significance.”
Part of Iseman’s purported concern over the running of the foundation was the organization’s failure to achieve the same market results or secure the kind of high-profile exhibitions being enjoyed by her contemporary Joan Mitchell. He particularly found lacking the foundation’s efforts to secure her legacy with exhibitions marking Frankenthaler’s upcoming centenary, in 2028.
Iseman also believed that the foundation wasn’t honoring Frankenthaler’s wishes that her work be shown at the nation’s leading museums. Instead, there were shows at smaller institutions like Massachusetts’s Provincetown Art Association and Museum, where Motherwell was a longtime board member.
And he wondered why Ross’s work was gracing the side of the Asia Society on Park Avenue in a monumental installation for a climate change-themed group show this year, after the Frankenthaler Foundation gave the organization $250,000 in grants in 2021 and ’22.
“It is outrageous that foundation resources may have helped secure that exhibition given there has not been a single exhibition of my aunt’s work at a significant museum in New York City since 1989,” Iseman said.
The Asia Society has denied that there was any “pay-for-play.” Orville Schell, director of the Asia Society’s Center on US-China Relations told the Art Newspaper that he has known Ross’s environmental photography work for years, and first showed it for the museum in 2018—years before any grant.
On the plus side, a rumored 2028 Frankenthaler show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was finally confirmed in April. (The institution slipped the news into the announcement that longtime curator Harry Cooper was changing roles, from head of the department of Modern and contemporary art to Modern art curator.)
But Iseman fears that Mountains and Sea, a 1952 Frankthaler currently on longterm loan to the NGA, might have become a bartering chip in securing the show. The painting represents a key early moment in the artist’s career as she began developing her signature “soak-stain” technique for working with oil paint.
“I am now deeply concerned that the defendants may have traded away [Frankenthaler’s] landmark work, Mountains and Sea, in a desperate attempt to buy the retrospective of my aunt’s art that they have promised for years but have been unable to deliver,” Iseman said. “The foundation’s refusal to answer our questions on that precise topic is highly alarming and worthy of scrutiny.”
Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea (1952). Collection of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York, on extended loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Artwork @Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Legal filings in the case include an August letter from Iseman’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, to the foundation’s lawyer, Lynn K. Neuner. She called the work’s potential donation to the the NGA “a scandalous breach of the director defendants’ fiduciary duties and entirely contrary to HFF’s mission to promote Ms. Frankenthaler’s artistic legacy and public appreciation for her body of work,” noting that the National Gallery has “a reputable collection of its own, [but] is far removed from the main centers of activity in the art world.”
The painting could fetch as much as $50 million at auction, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year.
Representatives from the foundation declined to comment on any potential plans to donate the canvas to the museum.
In granting the motion to dismiss, Judge Schechter noted that “the Attorney General would be the correct party to look into what’s going on with the foundation and [make sure] is everything on the up and up.”
With Iseman’s departure, the foundation’s board shrunk to just three members. But there have since been two high-profile additions from the museum world. Richard Armstrong, who retired in 2023 after 15 years as director of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, came on board in May. The following month, the board elected Ann Philbin, who will retire from her job as director of the Hammer Museum at UCLA in November.