Celebrity News

$50K kiddie-drawing gal would drop suit for apology

The $50,000 drawing.

The $50,000 drawing. (
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Michelle-Marie Heinemann — the philanthropist and artist who’s filed a $415,000 suit against her son’s Upper West Side private school saying she was scammed into buying a kiddie drawing for $50,000 — tells Page Six she’d settle for an apology and the dismissal of an administrator and teacher allegedly behind the scheme.

“I don’t want a dime from the school,” said Heinemann, who filed a suit with her financier husband, Jon. “I want them to acknowledge their egregious conduct. I loved giving to the school. But I don’t want it to be in a plot or a scheme.”

Heinemann said she’d already donated tens of thousands to exclusive Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, including $25,000 for a “green beautification project for child learning,” $6,000 for a designer clothes auction and $600 for a class trip to “Seussical: The Musical.”

But, she said, the school then turned her “labor of love art piece into a fund-raising scam.” Heinemann told us how she helped her son Hudson’s class create a painting, over three days, with handprints and quotes addressing, “How do you feel when you are around art?”

As first reported in Sunday’s Post, the suit claims the work was then offered at a school auction, and the Heinemanns agreed to place the winning bid, in absentia, of $3,000 after being told such an item would usually go for up to $1,200. But, the suit alleges, an administrator and a first-grade teacher drove bidding up to $50,000 and then stuck them with the bill.

“This is not about the money,” Heinemann said yesterday. “It’s about standing up for other parents that may not be able to come forward” and expose what she calls the school’s “pure greed.”

Heinemann, who said she’s also donated to charities Prize4Life and Southampton Hospital and founded Blankets for Warmth, added, “We desperately did not want to sue; we did not want to go this route.”

She pulled her son out of the school after the auction incident.

A spokesperson for the Cathedral School of Saint John the Divine commented today, “These allegations are sad, false and without merit. The Cathedral School has a more than 100-year reputation of excellence in education and service to its students and demonstrates a profound respect for the dignity and equality of every child.”