The Orlando Museum of Art announced on Tuesday that it is filing a lawsuit over faked artwork that it displayed in its “Heroes & Monsters” exhibit that prompted an FBI raid last year.
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Orlando Museum of Art, Mark Elliott, shared that the lawsuit “details the facts and circumstances that led to these works eventually finding their way to the Museum and seeks to hold responsible the people the Museum believes knowingly misrepresented the works’ authenticity and provenance. Given that litigation has commenced, the OMA looks forward to presenting its case to a jury.”
The exhibit in question featured 25 paintings reportedly done by the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat; they were seized by FBI agents amid an investigation into the works’ authenticity.
Some cardboard in pieces reportedly made in 1982 had a FedEx typeface not used until 1994, which was around six years after Basquiat died. The man who owned the locker where the art was found, Thad Mumford, told investigators he never owned any of Basquiat’s art and didn’t recognize what was in his storage.
Ex-Orlando Museum of Art Director Aaron De Groft, who is being sued, insisted that the art was legitimate, though he was later removed from his post.
Court documents now show that 45-year-old auctioneer Michael Barzman of North Hollywood admitted to prosecutors that he helped create between 20 and 30 fake pieces of art before marketing them as authentic works by Basquiat.
The lawsuit says that in 2012, Barzman and an accomplice schemed to forge the paintings with plans to sell them on eBay. Three others — Leo Mangan, William Force and Taryn Burns — had offered Barzman thousands of dollars to sign off that the paintings were legitimate.
The museum also claims that De Groft was persuaded to join the “conspiracy” by the promise of a “significant cut of the proceeds of the anticipated multimillion-dollar sale.”
According to court records, De Groft circumvented both the review committee and the museum’s curational staff to get the Basquiat “blockbuster exhibition” ready in a proposed in a swift five months; exhibitions take two-to-three years to curate, the museum said.
