They provided money to get an artistic statement about money, which they got, and which the executor/commissioner/agent both accepted delivery of, and displayed.
Did they charge any ticket or membership fees to enter the gallery where the accepted work was displayed? Did they return that collected money to the patrons?
Crying "crime!" is a weak argument. Jaywalking is a crime.
The criminal was not ordered to "just make art", but comissioned to make a specific piece requested by the gallery - in the form of a frame filled with said money. As such, this is no different than if you hired a carpenter to build you a house, paid upfront with contractual obligations, but the carpenter then just ran off with the money without doing anything. Or if you hired an individual and gave them access to company accounts for the purpose of doing their job, which they then embezzled and ran away with.
The money was loaned for a contractually described use-case with a return date. Walking away with it with no intention to return - and trying to keep it afterwards when sued - is nothing but theft of a significant sum.
I find it kind of strange that they don't want to keep these talking points but I think the court should have decided what value they already got out of using them if they don't permanently accept them.
The limited traction they'd get from this story and empty frames would already have played out - that 100k USD can do more good as commission to other, actually skilled artists for future works than padding one greedy criminal's pockets...
Well I have some news you may want to sit down for. Law is just a tool. A tool that was designed, manufactured, and finally wielded by people.
It gets worse. There is no such thing as any tool that was designed perfectly, or functions perfectly, or wielded perfectly.
We use it only because it's all we got and the best we can do. Chaos is worse. But all we got and the best we can do is actually quite garbage.
It's not worth your unthinking worship, and your unthinking worship does not make the world a better place.