This is one of the strangest, saddest, most holy-shit surprising stories I've ever worked on. Here's a thread about how it came about...
nytimes.com/2019/05/28/bus…
nytimes.com/2019/05/28/bus…
Last year, I got an anonymous tip about art auctions on cruise ships. This is an alternate art universe for the 24 million people who take cruises each year. The tipster (and lawsuits) alleged fraud and misleading sales practises on the high seas. (The gallery denies that.)
So, in December, my family and I went on a cruise, because...why not? 
Cruise art auctions include free champagne and almost entirely revolve around an iconic artist named Peter Max. TBH, I hadn't heard of Max, but for baby boomers, he is like Andy Warhol, a major pop art sensation in the '60s and 70s.
Back on dry land, I wondered where was Peter Max in all of this? How did he go from pop art icon to selling art on cruise ships often for as much as $30,000?
Months of reporting, thousands of pages of court documents later, I found out Peter Max was 81, has advanced dementia and hadn't painted in four years. And yet his studio kept churning out art for cruise ships. How?
Max’s estranged son and a cadre of business associates oversaw a paint-splattered studio on the Upper West Side above the Shun Lee Chinese restaurant, where nearly 2 dozen artists - some recruited off the street and paid minimum wage - churned out Max's art.
...Max would come to the studio twice a week and be instructed to sign the art that looked vaguely like his own. These works would then be sold on the world's cruise ships.
This practice continued for years until early this year, when I started asking around. Park West, the gallery that operates the at-sea auctions, compared Max to Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst and said his process met every legal standard.
Max's daughter Libra has now taken over her father's studio and is suing Park West. She's filed a restraining order to keep her brother away. Both Max children have also accused their stepmom Mary of abuse and neglect of Peter Max, including trying to kill him with a Brazil Nut
Meanwhile, Max works are still big sellers on the high seas. Our auctioneer Steven told me that Max's dementia made him more prolific. (Park West said salespeople are instructed not to say this.)
