ARTIST Mickalene Thomas Faces $10 Million Lawsuit From Ex-Fiancée Racquel Chevremont
Los Angeles—The multi-celebrated contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas, whose recent retrospective All About Love previously opened at The Broad in Los Angeles before traveling internationally, now finds her art-intimated career highlighted a high-profile legal battle with her companion. Thomas who successfully premiered at the Broad was sued by her former fiancée and art world collaborator, Racquel Chevremont, is demanding $10 million in damages for alleged exploitation, nonpayment, and harassment.
By Joey Krebs
Los Angeles—The multi-celebrated contemporary artist Mickalene Thomas, whose recent retrospective All About Love previously opened at The Broad in Los Angeles before traveling internationally, now finds her art-intimated career highlighted a high-profile legal battle with her companion. Thomas who successfully premiered at the Broad was sued by her former fiancée and art world collaborator, Racquel Chevremont, is demanding $10 million in damages for alleged exploitation, nonpayment, and harassment.
The lawsuit, which was filed August 8th 2025 in New York Supreme Court, accuses Thomas of underpaying Chevremont for more than a decade of work. According to court documents, Chevremont is an art consultant and former model who has also recently gained international recognition as the second ‘out’ cast member on Bravo’s Real Housewives of New York. Chevremont was the Artist’s strategic advisor, helping her secure multimillion-dollar deals, while enduring what she describes as a hostile work environment and repeated personal pressure after their loving relationship ended in 2020.
Chevremont’s claims go beyond just unpaid compensation where its suit alleges that Thomas diverted funds from their joint business entity, MT LLC, into the Artist’s own ventures, while also engaging in quid pro quo harassment. Charges include breach of contract, unjust enrichment, conversion, retaliation, and sexual harassment. Attorneys for both sides have yet to release their firm’s public statements.
For the art world, the case pits two influential personality figures in positions of oppositions. Thomas, one of the most prominent contemporary artists in the world today, is renowned for her monumental mixed-media explorations of Black womanhood, with works that sell up to $1.8 million in the secondary market. Chevremont, equally an important figure in the art world, has been recognized for her curatorial work and for the advancing representation of Black artists in mainstream institutions.
The lawsuit arrives at a critical moment in Thomas’s career which followed by her acclaimed double entendre exhibit titled, ‘All About Love’ retrospective—which launched last year at The Broad in 2024 and has since traveled to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and London’s Hayward Gallery where her visionary oeuvre today remains an ever so dominant voice in global contemporary art. The legal filing now adds a personal and professional inquiry to her public image with its new meaning.
At stake is not only $10 million but also reputational fallout in a field where collaborations, partnerships, and patron play out redefining roles. Its court documents provide the latest chapter in a personal and professional saga that will ultimately intersect love, art, and business, staged against the backdrop of today’s most celebrated creative couples during their creative mid-careers.
