A five-year legal battle has broken out between the heirs of American landscape painter Thomas Hart Benton and a Kansas City bank accused of mismanaging his estate and selling his works below market value , and misplaced more than 100 pieces of art, eventually ending up in the bank.
Missouri Judge Mark Styles ruled that UMB Bank did not breach its obligations to the famed Regionalist painter, who left his collection in their care before his death in 1975. Stiles discovered that only five works in the Benton collection could not be held by UMB Bank. According to KCUR-FM, which first reported the news, the missing work is not a painting, but is likely a sketch or research report.
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“From the beginning, we have had no doubt that Crosby Kemper and the UMB employees who have worked at the trust for more than 40 years acted with integrity and in compliance with the trust,” UMB Financial Chief Legal Officer Amy Harris said in a statement. The best interests of the Fund,” the statement was first quoted by KCUR.
The artist’s heirs, led by his daughter Jessie Benton, sued the bank in 2019, seeking $85 million in damages. They claim that during the Benton Trust’s 40-year stewardship, the bank sold poorly reviewed art without the trust’s approval and violated its copyrights and licenses.
The family was awarded $35,000 in compensation – a fraction of what they wanted. The family’s attorney said in a statement that the family was considering an appeal.
Kent Emison of Langdon & Emison, the law firm representing the Benton family, said: “Despite the outcome of the trial, we remain convinced that the Benton family has the right to make their case.”
Thomas Hart Benton was born in 1889 and lived and painted in the Roanoke neighborhood of Kansas City, but he traveled frequently throughout the American Midwest, South, and New York while working on projects for universities, corporations, and The U.S. government created the mural. His energetic, exaggerated style complements his frequent themes, the industrial upheaval of the early 20th century and its impact on labor and the American entertainment industry. (Jackson Pollock was a student of his at the Art Students League and often modeled for his murals of heroic laborers.)
By the 1930s and throughout the 1940s, Benton was associated with Regionalism (its follower Grant Wood), who rejected Abstract Expressionism and promoted realistic representations of rural America. He created more than 3,500 works of art during his lifetime, all of which were transferred to the Benton Trust and subsequently to banks.
“Benton entrusted UMB to assist him in developing and establishing his legacy as a world-renowned artist after his death,” Judge Styles wrote in the decision. “The evidence demonstrates that UMB fulfilled Benton’s wishes and desires.”
