On August 14, the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) filed suit against former director Aaron De Groft on the grounds that he destroyed the institution's reputation by knowingly displaying fake works by Jean-Michel Basquiat with the intention of legitimizing them and selling them for their own profit. Also named in the lawsuit are five co-owners of the paintings, who allegedly recruited De Groft into the forgery conspiracy. De Groft, who is named in the lawsuit as having committed fraud, conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty and breach of contract, is also accused of trying to sell works of questionable provenance by Titian and Jackson Pollock.
The lawsuit stems from an FBI investigation, spurred by a 2022 New York Times article, about an exhibition at the 2022 OMA of twenty-five works purportedly by the famous neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat. After the exhibit was raided by the Bureau's Art Crimes Unit, the works were discovered to be inauthentic, at least one rendered on the back of a FedEx box in a typeface not used by the sender until years after the death of the artist in 1988. A Los Angeles-based auctioneer earlier this spring admitted to playing a significant role in the forgery, hiring an artist to create the works, which he completed for a maximum of thirty minutes each, sometimes finishing a painting in less than five minutes. .
Source: Artnet News