Tom of Finland Foundation Fight: Durk Dehner Says His Board ‘Threw Me Under the Bus’

The Tom of Finland Foundation’s board filed a complaint with the California attorney general in August accusing co-founder Durk Dehner of collecting licensing royalties that belong to the nonprofit, New York magazine reported Tuesday. Dehner, 77, denies it.

“My own board threw me under the bus,” he told the magazine for Michael Waters’ feature, “The Leather Daddy’s War.”

At stake is the legacy of Touko Laaksonen, the Finnish artist who drew as Tom of Finland and died in 1991. His leathermen got so famous that Finland’s postal service, Posti, put them on stamps in 2014 and shipped advance orders to 178 countries. His name still sells, all the way to a Sniffies takeover in Provincetown during Bear Week. The foundation’s collection holds Tom originals plus about 6,000 works by more than 800 artists, Robert Mapplethorpe and Jean Cocteau among them, and New York magazine estimated it’s worth at least $40 million.

Board chair Robert Knox Hayes told the magazine the board acted because “it was in the best interest of Tom’s legacy.” Why the Tom of Finland Foundation Went to the Attorney General

Under a 1984 partnership, Dehner collected half of Tom’s licensing royalties, according to the magazine. Tom’s 1991 will left his share to Tom of Finland Inc., which the magazine said wasn’t formally registered until 1994. The board says that money belongs to the foundation, and the two sides also dispute a 2024 memo of understanding. A complaint to the attorney general is an accusation, not a finding.

“For 40 years Durk Dehner served as President of the Board, a paid employee, [and] landlord of the Tom of Finland Foundation, and received payments from the Foundation’s commercial business,” the board said in an October statement to ARTnews.

Money’s tight. The foundation took in $678,048 in 2024 and spent $801,161, finishing with negative net assets, according to its federal tax filing on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. The 2023 filing lists Dehner as president, paid $34,068.

New York magazine reported the board projects about $250,000 in legal fees over the next year. Most of that is tied to a 2023 lawsuit against the licensee CultureEdit, which the magazine described as Dehner’s, and a countersuit. Neither is resolved. Los Angeles Superior Court records list case 23STCV25666 as Tom of Finland Foundation Inc. v. CultureEdit LLC. A Leather S.S.-Style Hat and Dehner’s 2025 Resignation

The rupture started in January 2025. An Instagram user surfaced a headshot of Dehner wearing a leather S.S.-style hat, a photo he’d submitted with an application to judge an International Mr. Leather contest, New York magazine reported. Dehner told the magazine it was fetish wear, not hate speech. ARTnews reported that IML dropped him as a judge, and he resigned as the foundation’s president that month.

Dehner and his partner, S.R. Sharp, had recruited several of the people now on the board, according to the magazine. Hayes became chair in August 2025. In July 2025, the board didn’t renew CEO Edward Cella’s contract.

“Durk has pushed out those board members, employees, and friends who questioned his authority or his decision-making about key aspects of the organization,” Cella said in a statement to New York magazine. Rent, Layoffs and an Eviction Claim at ‘Tom House’

Dehner bought the 1911 Craftsman at 1421 Laveta Terrace in 1979. Tom made much of his work in an upstairs bedroom there, Los Angeles magazine reported last year, when Cella said the city landmark was being “loved to death.”

This summer, the board stopped paying rent, laid off most staff over Zoom in June and moved the collection to Crozier Fine Arts storage downtown, the magazine reported. The board told ARTnews that four positions were cut on July 15 “to align operations with our resources.” It also said Dehner, as landlord, evicted the foundation in July. The collection moved for its safety after the area was reclassified as a high-risk wildfire zone, the board told ARTnews.

A September statement on the foundation’s website said “the Foundation can no longer responsibly operate as a resident organization in Mr. Dehner’s home,” ARTnews reported.

Dehner’s answer is a website, Save TOM House, which New York magazine described as calling for the board’s ouster. The foundation “stopped paying the monthly rent, which allowed me to preserve TOM House and continue the work of preserving Tom’s legacy,” his statement there reads. It says the board’s decision to leave “has left TOM House without funding or any support.” The site tells visitors to “Demand accountability and email the Tom of Finland Foundation’s board of directors.”

“Tom House is not just a building. It’s an organic energy source,” Dehner told New York magazine. Hayes Floats ONE Archives at USC for the Tom of Finland Collection

Hayes wants to digitize the collection and possibly donate it to an existing queer archive, the magazine reported, naming ONE Archives at the USC Libraries as one option. ONE, founded in 1952, calls itself the world’s largest repository of LGBTQ materials.

Former residents have their own complaints. Forty-one artists from the residency program signed an open letter in September, Hyperallergic reported, and the letter’s coordinator, Carta Monir, said the board was “refusing to answer any questions.”

“We are dealing with hell-raisers,” Hayes told ARTnews, “but we are hell-bent on protecting this organization.”

Dehner recalled Tom once telling him, “If it gets too difficult, just walk away.”

“I could never walk away,” Dehner told New York magazine.

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