Thomas Hart Benton
Recently, a five-year legal battle ended after a Missouri state court ruled against the family of artist Thomas Hart Benton.
Thomas Hart Benton was one of the most influential American artists of the twentieth century. Along with his contemporary Grant Wood, Benton’s depictions of working life in both rural and urban settings helped shape Regionalist art in the United States. Some of his best-known works are murals and other public artworks commissioned by the government or private businesses. Benton was also an art teacher in New York and Kansas City. Among his students were Reginald Marsh and, most interestingly, Jackson Pollock. Though Pollock would become one of the most famous abstract expressionists in the postwar era, he owed so much to his teacher, who openly detested abstract art. What Pollock gained from Benton was mainly the motivation and discipline necessary to pursue a career in the arts.
Benton left his estate in the care of a trust managed by United Missouri Bank based in Kansas City. When Benton was getting his affairs in order towards the end of his life, he chose UMB to manage his estate since the bank was, at the time, run by his close friend R. Crosby Kemper, Jr. In 2019, the artist’s daughter Jessie and her three children filed a lawsuit against UMB over their alleged mismanagement of the estate. The family accused the bank of selling many works in the estate without proper appraisals, below their market value, and without informing the Benton family. Essentially, the family alleges that the bank hastily sold many works and did not sell them for their maximal value. The family initially sued the bank for $85 million. UMB referred to the lawsuit as misguided, and the president at the time, Jim Rine, expressed regret at the family’s choice to resolve this matter in the courts.
Jessie Benton passed away in February 2023, shortly before the trial could properly begin. The court continued with the proceedings regardless. Judge Mark Styles of Missouri’s 16th Circuit Court ruled that the Benton family’s allegations were unfounded. The court found fewer than five works meant to be in the bank’s possession could not be accounted for, a far cry from the one hundred works the artist’s family alleged. These missing works are likely sketches and not major paintings. Styles wrote that UMB did not act negligently and “accomplished Benton’s wishes and desires” in managing his estate. Even though the court ruled against the family, they received $35,000 as compensation for the missing sketches. Styles further wrote that even though several members of the Benton family were parties in the suit, Jessie Benton was the only plaintiff who even cared about the case. Styles wrote that the plaintiffs remaining after Jessie’s death seemed “extremely disinterested in this case.” The family’s lawyers later stated that even though the court ruled in the bank’s favor, “we still strongly believe in the merits of the case for the Benton family.” Mariner Kemper, the bank’s current chairman and CEO, said that Jessie Benton tried to “exploit false claims and ruin the reputation of our company, […] and the Court’s decision proves that justice does prevail, even if it may take time.”