Long before the obsession with looksmaxxing and testosterone-boosted biceps, the artist Tom of Finland began to build a cult following in the 1950s around his illustrations of beefy bikers and leather-clad policemen so muscular they practically exploded out of their outfits.
More than three decades after the artist’s death in 1991, his gay erotica is now held by multiple major museums and featured in fashion shows, films and nightclub bathrooms. The Finnish artist’s former Los Angeles home, the TOM House, is a city landmark and a symbol of the gay community in Echo Park, where it sits.
But who exactly deserves to guide the legacy of Touko Laaksonen (the artist’s real name) has become the subject of an increasingly bitter dispute between the artist’s former muse, model and business partner, Durk Dehner, and the Tom of Finland Foundation, a nonprofit tasked with protecting the artist’s work.
Dehner, a Canadian businessman and leatherman, founded the nonprofit with Laaksonen in 1984, and served as president until 2025, when he resigned under pressure from other trustees. Images had resurfaced of him wearing Nazi regalia. Dehner apologized and said they were remnants from an era when some people in fetish communities dressed as Nazis to appear subversive. But he was subsequently dropped as a judge for the pageant International Mr. Leather, with the competition’s executive director saying, “Hate has no place at I.M.L. Period, full stop.”
Part of the ongoing dispute between Dehner and the foundation concerns money. The trustees say that their review of the foundation’s books found that over the years Dehner received royalty payments for licensing and other fees that they believe were supposed to go to the foundation.
Dehner says the allegations are slanderous and inaccurate. “The foundation was my child with Tom,” he said.
Dehner said his agreements with Laaksonen, including the artist’s 1991 will, provided that he receive all royalties paid to Tom of Finland Inc., a company that licensed out the artist’s images. He acknowledges signing licensing agreements under the foundation’s name, but said it was to ensure that the nonprofit would be a recognized party to such deals after his death.
But the foundation said that Dehner’s agreements with the artist were separate from the licensing deals that identified the nonprofit as the rights holder.
“All this started in an effort to protect the foundation legally,” said Robert Knox Hayes, the foundation’s new chairman.
The foundation is not seeking money from Dehner at this time, but it is seeking to rescind a 2024 agreement that it says he made with the foundation as its president that entitled him to a share of the foundation’s licensing fees going forward.
In August, the foundation notified the California attorney general’s office in writing that it was negotiating to rescind that agreement because of concerns it was at odds with the state’s law governing nonprofits.
The California attorney general’s office, which monitors charities within the state, declined to comment. (Despite its name, the Tom of Finland Foundation is registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a charity, not a private foundation.)
By the time Dehner met Laaksonen in 1978, the artist’s illustrations were already famous in the gay community. They circulated in bodybuilding magazines that were popular decades earlier, like Physique Pictorial. Though the filmmaker John Waters, who discovered Laaksonen’s drawings in the late 1950s, referred to him as “one of the founders of filth,” museum curators came to celebrate his illustrations as beacons of unashamed sexuality made at a time when gay relationships were taboo.
“It’s not like party-and-play, hidden-hotel-rooms business,” the curator Stefan Kalmár said in 2015 when he organized a retrospective of the artist at Artists Space in New York.
As Laaksonen’s business manager, Dehner worked to coordinate the artist’s financial interests through licensing agreements and other business deals. In 1979, Dehner purchased what became the TOM House with three other people. Dehner lived there and Laaksonen would stay there intermittently over the next decade until his death.
The house soon became a place for chosen family; queer people kicked out of their families would temporarily stay there, and artists would volunteer their time to study the archive of Laaksonen’s work. For years, the foundation’s offices were located in the home’s attic and it leased space for resident artists to live there. A collection of 1,500 of the artist’s works were stored in the house as well.
But last summer, when the foundation fell behind on its $6,500 monthly rental fee, Dehner began eviction proceedings and the foundation moved out. Dehner said in an interview that he is having trouble paying the $400,000 mortgage without that income and the roughly $30,000 he had been making as president of the nonprofit. He said he may need to sell artworks from his personal collection.
“It has been a rough time,” Dehner, 77, said. “I lost my employment. I lost any other revenue that I was receiving from the foundation.”
Dehner has started a website called “Save TOM House,” where he posted letters of support signed by more than 60 artists and others. “A man who stood the watch for 40 years does not become disposable,” a filmmaker named Dom of Pigland said in his letter, “merely because others have grown comfortable occupying the institution he helped build.”
But the foundation’s chairman, Hayes, said that Dehner had left the nonprofit in such precarious financial shape that it might need to sell artworks from its Tom of Finland collection to survive. Hayes estimated the collection’s value at $40 million, though an official appraisal has not been done. The foundation now stores the works at a climate-controlled facility in Los Angeles.
A notable turnover in the makeup of the foundation’s board took place in 2024 when several new trustees replaced members who had resigned for various reasons. Some condemned Dehner’s use of Nazi regalia or how the foundation had been managed. The reconstituted board made some belt-tightening moves, which included laying off all but one of the foundation’s eight full-time and contract employees.
Dehner predicts that the new trustees, which he refers to as a “rogue board,” want to relocate the foundation to New York, where all five current trustees live. Moving the art from his home was a first step in that process, he said.
Hayes denied there are any plans to move the foundation. “It’s a California-registered foundation,” he said. The artworks were moved from the house, he said, because it’s located in an area where it’s difficult to secure fire insurance.
Brooke Wise, a curator on the foundation’s board, said the new trustees were as committed to the future of Laaksonen’s legacy as anyone.
She said she has spent her personal savings and more than 40 hours per week to support the nonprofit. In September, she arranged a sponsorship for a Tom of Finland Foundation exhibition in Paris that she helped organize and that focused on erotic art and censorship.
“I never once asked for money,” Wise said. “Buttoning up — while not sexy — is the only way for this to be sustainable. We all want Tom’s legacy to exist in 100 years.”
Trustees said the organization will need to become financially healthy before restarting the artist residency and other community events. Hayes said the foundation plans to amend past tax forms to correct errors, including exaggerated claims of the nonprofit’s revenue from public events.
Many former employees and former artist residents of the foundation still believe that Dehner was unfairly treated, given all he has devoted to the leather community and gay erotic art.
“Durk is the last living connection to Tom,” said Richard Villani, who previously served as the foundation’s director of global partnerships and exhibitions. “Durk knew every player in that world as it blossomed and bloomed in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Hayes, who lives in Manhattan, said he doubted that he would be able to regain the trust of the foundation’s longtime supporters, many of whom are from the local community and are very loyal to Dehner. He said that he regretted not being more transparent about the nonprofit’s financial health as he dug into the paperwork.
“Durk has made this queer oasis in Echo Park,” he said. “And it seems like I’m trying to burn the house down to them.”
But in the future, Hayes hoped to find common ground: “I want to rebuild together rather than apart.”
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