This is a Legal Fund for Chaédria LaBouvier. It is meant to create infrastructure and resources for on-going support in on-going process of navigating copyright infringement and other attendant/adjacent legal remedies. The immediate goal is $30K that will cover retainer(s), adjacent legal expenses and time/space to organize documents for lawyers. I am in touch with a few lawyers, but I have not retained counsel. If you are an IP lawyer and/or a lawyer w/expertise w/the outline below,please be in touch here .

For those that prefer to give directly, my PayPal is @chaedria and Venmo is @lalaboux. Thank you in advance!

What follows are two stories. The most immediate is a story about the continued copyright infringement of my book Basquiat's Defacement: The Untold Story, institutional bullying and malpractice of Vox Media, Celadon as they protect Elon Green's theft of my work.

The second is how the Guggenheim Museum created the conditions to allow that to not only happen, but flourish across industries w/the ultimate effect of misrepresenting my work, its ownership and hiding a seismic chapter of art history from the public. Privately and publicly I have lived with, since 2019, threats, smear campaigns and other harassments and violences that are unsustainable. This also follows a pattern of harassment, smearing and threats that witnesses that saw and know what happened at the Guggenheim experienced as well and were intimidated into silence. Vox benefits from this enterprise and network of harm, made manifest in the Criminal podcast, "The Man Nobody Killed".

Below is in image of my car, where a catalytic converter should be after it was ripped out in 2022 before the publishing of a smear campaign in The Atlantic. I was also harassed out of an apartment with Guggenheim links, and followed in the parking garage, as documented in this text message below.

The Beginning

In 2019, I curated Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story and the catalogue that went with it. The exhibition and the catalogue have influenced and changed the art world, politically and technically. It created space for Amy Sherald's portrait of Breonna Taylor and an entire industry found a voice to speak up against their institutions because I went first. But before that, my work sought to make and prove a bold claim: that this small painting should change how we look and understand the work of Basquiat and his 80s peers, and how Defacement’s aftermath influenced art activism. And it could be done by centering the voice of Michael Stewart, the subject of Defacement, integrating ethics and art history.

Contrary to how many curators work, my scholarship and published works are not works-for-hire. Because I have always funded my work independently since I began at the age of 18, I did not sign my ownership to the Guggenheim, and a 2018 contract and its 2019 addendum reflects that. (More on that below.) So when Elon Green plagiarized my work, it was not only an abuse of fair use -- there is no justification for 35 examples and counting -- but it was a violation of my copyright, because I own this work.

Through plagiarism and its platforming, Vox Media, Celadon and Elon Green continue to extend and enrich themselves from not only an enterprise of harm, but a historical pattern wherein Black people, particularly women, are robbed of their work, its economic benefit, authority and stewardship. And this economic theft is happening in the backdrop of the historic unemployment of Black women . Work that should be supporting my livelihood because I've worked for it and I own it was stolen by not just a White man with the backing of an institution, but one that has a fraction of my expertise, training and skill. Otherwise, Elon Green would've created his own work. There is no world in which my work and my family -- who helped to fund my independent research -- should be subsidizing him, Vox, Celadon or any other institution.

Vox's legal team said that they consider the matter "resolved." You can find more examples and context here, on my Substack.

Since July 2025, Vox Media has ignored multiple warnings and DMCA notices that the Criminal Podcast produced a podcast that contains copyright infringements of my work, and is based on The Man Nobody Killed, a book that has close to 30 examples of plagiarism and copyright infringement. A few examples are included, but more can be found on here. Green not only acknowledges that my book had an "outsize role" in his derivative work. What he fails to tell his audience is that my work is cited more than 30 times, some of it is nearly verbatim copied in his, and the book lacks proper citation and endnotes, intentionally obscuring the source material and severity of the the copying, such as the example below. Green is capable of citation as seen here, but nowhere in the book cites my work -- or anyone else's.

Vox Media is emboldened to steal my work, and continue to lie to the public because they saw the Guggenheim Museum do it first with no consequences.

What you are listening to is Nancy Spector, then Chief Curator of the Guggenheim in January 2020, admitting on tape to arranging a contract that the museum had no intention of paying. This means that the exhibition the catalogue, and everything that you've read about me in smear campaigns has also been under a thick gauze of what some might consider fraud. This is merely the tip of the iceberg. This is more than deception or corruption; this is highly illegal. And Vox Media is benefiting from it, because they share the same values.

The audio describing how the Guggenheim intends to defame and misrepresent me, historical fact of my being the first Black curator in the museum's 80 year history and mislead the public has been some of the most disgusting, deranged and morally bankrupt words that I've ever read. To have it personally directed at you and your former colleagues sitting a table planning how to use the resources of the art world, press and allies to attempt to bury you -- for the "crime" of wanting to be treated as a human being -- is a devastation that deserves a public meditation at some point. It has been surreal to live it.

I do not want your pity, because that's too easy. What I want is for you to help me.

Why/Where The Money Goes

The money raised from the Legal Fund will go towards securing a retainer for a lawyer or multiple lawyers, as well as expenses related to sustaining this process.

$4500 – retainer fees to advance an adjacent legal issue

$5000 -- re-payment for a retainer fee (adjacent legal issue)

$10,000-$15,000 – these are the estimates that I’ve gotten about IP lawyers retainers. It may very well be more than this.

$700 -- $1K –filing and mailing costs for additional paperwork and notices

$5K -- an emergency buffer

If I am able to get past the $30K a lot more options open up, especially closer to the $100K threshold. This is not exhaustive or reflect the hundreds of thousands of dollars that I, my family and friends have spent, subsidized my work, safety, housing/relocation and everything it else it took to survive theft and institutional harm endorsed by the art-world, publishing and journalism industries.

Additional monies will be spent on prioritizing the legal process with updates here and on my Substack. Additionally, another way of supporting my work and legal journey is by following and/or subscribing to Curating Basquiat. The paid subscriptions will go into this process and fortifying infrastructures so that I can sustain and protect myself. I imagine that there will be more smear campaigns and uptick of harassment and violences that I've already experienced in the past when I've tried to speak up, so additional money will go towards addressing that.

This is not hyperbole. This is Nancy's sister, Susan Spector McPherson. She has her own place in this story, but less than 48 hours of me publishing this story wherein I stated that I had something to say to the public and her sister is mentioned, Susan liked it. This is not an accident. No one whose sister has committed what some might be considered fraud, has been framed as a "victim" , and who is blocked on all social media platforms and has helped her sister "accidentally" likes a story like that. It is a form of "soft" but clear intimidation. It was a notice to let me know that they are watching me. Anyone that has dealt with harassment, stalking, obsessive behaviors and/or narcissism knows exactly what this is.

The money that I raise will go towards protecting myself against this energy and action, because I 100% believe that unless they are stopped, it will be acted upon.

Someone recently asked me if I feel safe. No, and I rarely have. I feel even less safe by Vox's actions and bullying, because I know what institutions are capable of in order to protect a lie. I understand the public interest in this story, and why. But I also want to remind people that there's a human being at the center of this story, one that has created the foundation of so much and whose voice has been silence and attacked the most.

In supporting this Legal Fund, I am asking you to remember that I am a human being, and that I deserve to be protected, and stand in full authority, authorship and benefit of the work that I have created.