Iowa State pays, praises ex-director to end Lego art dispute

In 2016, Iowa State University accused an employee of fraud and theft in a dispute over the unusual but lucrative campus assets she managed: popular outdoor sculptures made of thousands of Lego bricks.

Three years later, the school has withdrawn its allegations against Teresa McLaughlin under a settlement reached last month. The university paid McLaughlin $225,000 in wages and attorneys' fees, will offer her health insurance until 2022 and has given her a glowing letter of recommendation from its president calling her an honest employee who made major contributions over 17 years. Iowa State will also dedicate a bench for McLaughlin in Reiman Gardens, the campus landmark that she spent much of her career building as its director.

Those steps end a dispute that derailed the Lego art program conceived by McLaughlin, called Nature Connects. The traveling exhibits featured sculptures of plants and animals, were displayed at zoos and gardens nationwide and brought in revenue for Iowa State.

McLaughlin said she wants to restore her reputation, which she believes was unfairly sullied by her alma mater. She said the university made claims of wrongdoing against her without evidence and while in possession of records that exonerated her.

She said the dispute hurt her finances and "took a great toll on me and my family."

"I did not think Iowa State would do this to me," she said in an interview in Coralville, where she lives. She called the experience "confusing, unfair and unfortunate."

The university does not admit wrongdoing in the settlement, which avoided a June trial.

McLaughlin envisioned the sculptures as a way to draw visitors to Reiman Gardens, a 17-acre (7-hectare) space on the Ames campus. McLaughlin began working there in 1999 and built one of the "finest and most unique public gardens in the country," according to university President Wendy Wintersteen's recommendation letter.

Iowa State hired Brooklyn artist Sean Kenney to build the sculptures, which went on display at Reiman Gardens in 2012. Seeing demand to market them nationwide, the school reached agreements with Kenney to build four more.

McLaughlin stepped down as gardens director in 2014 to become director of Nature Connects. Dozens of institutions from Hawaii to Chicago agreed to pay between $70,000 and $150,000 to display the exhibits for several weeks. Directors of zoos and gardens raved about how they boosted attendance.

But by 2016, an aide to Roy Reiman, a top university donor who helped fund the exhibits and for whom the gardens are named, was questioning the costs, including payments to Kenney and McLaughlin, who received a 10% commission on exhibit sales under her university contract.

Emails show that a top aide to then-President Steven Leath pushed to change the formula for splitting the profits with the artist so the school could get a larger "administrative fee." McLaughlin objected to the request, noting the contracts had been signed after reviews by Iowa State officials and could not be changed unilaterally.

A school-ordered restructuring then laid off McLaughlin's assistant and transferred oversight of the program's finances to the administration. Kenney began complaining that the university took away support that was critical to making the exhibits successful and wasn't paying him what he was promised. A frustrated McLaughlin announced she would take an early retirement but agreed to stay a few months to finalize several pending sales. Things soon got worse.

She received a surprise letter from a law firm hired by Iowa State. The letter ordered her to stop working and telling her she was under investigation for alleged conflicts of interest related to her outside work with Kenney's company.

Iowa State stopped paying commissions McLaughlin was owed, and she filed a lawsuit seeking payment. The university filed counterclaims accusing McLaughlin of breaching her fiduciary duty and committing fraud and unjust enrichment. It alleged that she was profiting at the university's expense by secretly helping Kenney market competing exhibits.

McLaughlin said the claims were false, noting that Iowa State approved her limited work for Kenney's company. She denied ever putting Kenney's interests ahead of Iowa State's and she earned little from the arrangement. Iowa State settled its dispute with Kenney in 2017. McLaughlin, 62, said she doesn't understand why the school fought her for two more years.

On the bench honoring her, McLaughlin has asked the school to enshrine a Dalai Lama quote: "Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian court on Friday ordered the detention of the country’s farm minister in the latest high-profile corruption investigation, while Kyiv security officials assessed how they can recover lost battlefield momentum in the war against Russia.

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled that Agriculture Minister Oleksandr Solskyi should be held in custody for 60 days, but he was released after paying bail of 75 million hryvnias ($1.77 million), a statement said.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspects Solskyi headed an organized crime group that between 2017 and 2021 unlawfully obtained land worth 291 million hryvnias ($6.85 million) and attempted to obtain other land worth 190 million hryvnias ($4.47 million).

Ukraine is trying to root out corruption that has long dogged the country. A dragnet over the past two years has seen Ukraine’s defense minister, top prosecutor, intelligence chief and other senior officials lose their jobs.

That has caused embarrassment and unease as Ukraine receives tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid to help fight Russia’s army, and the European Union and NATO have demanded widespread anti-graft measures before Kyiv can realize its ambition of joining the blocs.

In Ukraine's capital, doctors and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a children’s hospital on Friday after a video circulated online saying Russia planned to attack it.

Parents hefting bags of clothes, toys and food carried toddlers and led young children from the Kyiv City Children’s Hospital No. 1 on the outskirts of the city. Medics helped them into a fleet of waiting ambulances to be transported to other facilities.

In the video, a security official from Russian ally Belarus alleged that military personnel were based in the hospital. Kyiv city authorities said that the claim was “a lie and provocation.”

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that civic authorities were awaiting an assessment from security services before deciding when it was safe to reopen the hospital.

“We cannot risk the lives of our children,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to hold online talks Friday with the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which has been the key international organization coordinating the delivery of weapons and other aid to Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said late Thursday that the meeting would discuss how to turn around Ukraine’s fortunes on the battlefield. The Kremlin’s forces have gained an edge over Kyiv’s army in recent months as Ukraine grappled with a shortage of ammunition and troops.

Russia, despite sustaining high losses, has been taking control of small settlements as part of its effort to drive deeper into eastern Ukraine after capturing the city of Avdiivka in February, the U.K. defense ministry said Friday.

It’s been slow going for the Kremlin’s troops in eastern Ukraine and is likely to stay that way, according to the Institute for the Study of War. However, the key hilltop town of Chasiv Yar is vulnerable to the Russian onslaught, which is using glide bombs — powerful Soviet-era weapons that were originally unguided but have been retrofitted with a navigational targeting system — that obliterate targets.

“Russian forces do pose a credible threat of seizing Chasiv Yar, although they may not be able to do so rapidly,” the Washington-based think tank said late Thursday.

It added that Russian commanders are likely seeking to advance as much as possible before the arrival in the coming weeks and months of new U.S. military aid, which was held up for six months by political differences in Congress.

While that U.S. help wasn’t forthcoming, Ukraine’s European partners didn’t pick up the slack, according to German’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Ukraine support.

“The European aid in recent months is nowhere near enough to fill the gap left by the lack of U.S. assistance, particularly in the area of ammunition and artillery shells,” it said in a report Thursday.

Ukraine is making a broad effort to take back the initiative in the war after more than two years of fighting. It plans to manufacture more of its own weapons in the future, and is clamping down on young people avoiding conscription, though it will take time to process and train any new recruits.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Ukrainian young acting student Gleb Batonskiy plays piano in a public park in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)