Donald Judd’s foundation is suing Kim Kardashian over a 2022 YouTube video in which she says, “These Donald Judd tables are really amazing.” According to the suit filed on Wednesday, the Donald Judd tables were not amazing because they were in fact built by a company named Clements Design — not Donald Judd.
In the video, you can see Kardashian walking around a sleek wooden table and chairs that very much resemble Judd’s La Mansana Table 22 and Chair 84. “If you guys are furniture people, because I’ve really gotten into furniture lately,” she says, “these Donald Judd tables are really amazing and totally blend in with the seats.” This was not fair to Donald Judd or the furniture people, the suit states: “Consumers who watched the video or read the media coverage were misled to believe Ms. Kardashian’s tables and chairs were authentic Donald Judd pieces.” After the foundation’s attempts to resolve the matter without litigation were met with what it claims were “delays and excuses from Ms. Kardashian and Clements Design,” it sued.
The foundation prohibits customers from using the designer’s furniture for “marketing and promotional purposes.” This isn’t the first time the Judd Foundation has sued to protect the artist’s legacy — in 2022, it sued two art galleries for leaving permanent oily fingerprints on one of his sculptures. Judd himself was also quite specific about how and with whom he worked.
The Judd Foundation’s suit also accuses Clements Design of trademark and copyright infringement. (Clements Design released a statement to the New York Times saying there were “obvious key differences” in the furniture, while the Judd Foundation pulled up a Clements Design invoice that describes it as “in the style of Donald Judd.”)
According to the lawsuit, the Judd Foundation reached out to Kardashian’s team right after the video was posted, and in response, her spokesperson apologized, offering to update the caption with a retraction about the furniture’s provenance. But the Judd Foundation did not want a retraction. It wanted the video deleted and the offending Clements Design furniture destroyed.
“We don’t want to be mixed up with Kim Kardashian. We respect what she does,” a lawyer for the Judd Foundation told the Times. “But we don’t want to be involved with this.”