‘A truth stranger than fiction’: Basquiat lawsuit details secrets, threats and conspiracies at Orlando Museum of Art

ORLANDO, Fla. — Top Orlando Museum of Art staff members felt bullied and threatened. Board members were clueless about the museum director’s conduct, while their chairwoman kept news of FBI subpoenas from them and secretly retained legal counsel.

The civil lawsuit filed in circuit court this week by the museum against former Director Aaron De Groft and the owners of more than two dozen works of art once attributed to the deceased artist Jean-Michel Basquiat depicts an institution riddled with secrecy, threats and conspiracies.

The lawsuit charges De Groft and the owners with fraud, conspiracy and breach of contract. Its 77 pages are full of details of the chaos leading up to the opening of the ill-fated “Heroes & Monsters” exhibition of works attributed to the acclaimed artist, who died in 1988. Among them:

—An owner of the artwork that would cause the greatest scandal in the museum’s nearly 100-year-old history was secretly pulling the strings behind the scenes — though he had no official position with the museum — as he drafted letters for De Groft to copy and paste onto museum letterhead and wrote the answers De Groft parroted to press inquiries about the troubled exhibition.

—De Groft flouted FBI instructions and said a “catastrophic event” destroyed the data on his cellphone, which the FBI wanted to inspect.

—Questions were raised and arguments raged over anachronistic shipping labels, “M.A.S.H” star Loretta “Hot Lips Houlihan” Swit’s connection to a bizarre poem De Groft felt gave the art legitimacy, the quality of work of a fingerprint expert summoned to help verify the art, and exactly who should — or would — contribute to an exhibition catalog that would end up being used like a sales brochure for art that many believed was not authentic.

As the lawsuit dramatically states: “The story of how the paintings ended up on the walls of OMA is a truth stranger than fiction, publicly described by Defendant (Pierce) O’Donnell as a ‘concatenation of unlikely events.’ How prophetic those words would later prove to be.”

O’Donnell’s influence

O’Donnell, a high-profile California attorney among the works’ owners, was the driving force behind bringing the art to Central Florida. His law firm, Greenberg Glusker, describes him as “one of the most influential, accomplished, and sought-after trial attorneys in the U.S., with groundbreaking success representing clients in closely watched matters across virtually every major industry and area of litigation.”

Perhaps he is best known for representing Shelly Sterling in the litigation surrounding her $2 billion sale of the Los Angeles Clippers against the wishes of her estranged husband in 2014.

In emails gathered by the museum for the lawsuit, De Groft is deferential to him, although he was unconnected to the museum.

He told one correspondent that outside experts weren’t needed to examine the art because “Pierce is the real expert on these works. ... I am second in line.”

In another instance, De Groft hastily distanced himself from a suggestion by the museum lawyers that O’Donnell did not like. And he deferred to O’Donnell on details such as who should contribute to the exhibition’s catalog, paid for by the museum — one of the stipulations in the deal brokered by O’Donnell.

In a May 2021 email that is part of the museum’s case, O’Donnell sounds like De Groft’s supervisor, overruling his choices for catalog contributors because they weren’t diverse enough.

“Good try,” O’Donnell wrote after De Groft informed him of his writer selections. “With all due respect, three males, two white males and no blacks or women?!? We have time to find a couple. Take a look at the article re top Blacks in art. Some super candidates. Thanks.”

O’Donnell also weighed in on the catalog’s essays and, according to the museum, directed OMA employees to provide copies of the catalog to potential buyers and gallerists, even requesting an electronic version of it he could send to those interested in purchasing a Basquiat.

Selling the works was of primary interest to the owners, who included De Groft in emails discussing potential buyers — even though possible sales had nothing to do with the museum or the exhibition.

“How are you pitching this? I am getting pressed to give the offering price from both the Samsung and Hyundai family’s (sic). What is that price?” asked one of the owners in a group message.

With the single word “Amazing!” O’Donnell emailed De Groft a list of sales prices of other Basquiats — prices that reached more than $110 million for a single work.

The museum’s lawsuit takes note of the way the connection between De Groft and O’Donnell went beyond business as usual.

“De Groft and O’Donnell also had (for two professionals allegedly involved in an arm’s length transaction) a bizarrely close relationship,” it states. “At one point, De Groft told O’Donnell, ‘I really like talking to you. I am out tonight.’ O’Donnell replied, ‘Yes. And separated at birth my brother.’ In another email, De Groft told O’Donnell, ‘(l)ove you my friend.'”

Perhaps most strangely, O’Donnell himself wrote the letter purportedly from De Groft, in which the museum made its official offer to exhibit the art, OMA discovered. O’Donnell provided the text, writing in the director’s voice with first-person sentences such as “My professional background entails discovering, authenticating and exhibiting ‘lost art’ by Rembrandt, Titian, and da Vinci.”

He instructed De Groft to cut and paste the letter onto OMA letterhead, the lawsuit states. Then O’Donnell replied to accept what was essentially his own offer.

Staff concerns

The museum says De Groft began acting in opposition to his ethical and fiduciary responsibilities to the museum “almost immediately after being hired” in January 2021. As the Basquiat exhibition started moving forward, OMA staffers were quick to raise questions — especially about the work’s convoluted origin story and the trail of ownership, or provenance, critical to authenticating art.

“When OMA’s curatorial staff and other key employees sounded the alarm about discrepancies in the falsified provenance, De Groft and the Owner Defendants ignored them,” the lawsuit states. “Later, those employees were silenced by De Groft at the behest of the Owner Defendants after they discovered and reported overwhelming evidence that the paintings could not have been created by Basquiat in 1982.”

That “overwhelming evidence” consisted in part of a shipping label under the paint on the cardboard used for the art that was found by staff months before the exhibit’s February 2022 opening. The label contained the name and address of Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman, who would later tell the FBI he helped fake the art and plead guilty to lying to law enforcement. But in 1982, when the art was said to have been painted before Basquiat’s 1988 death, Barzman was only 4 years old.

Also, staff found it inconceivable that Basquiat would have created the work on cardboard once in Barzman’s possession as a child, then — as the owners’ origin story went — sell it to “M.A.S.H” screenwriter Thad Mumford, only to have Mumford abandon the art in a storage locker, with the locker’s contents decades later returning to Barzman.

But their protestations were ignored, the suit says. It lays out an encounter in which, faced with staff objections, De Groft “provided several implausible justifications, which OMA’s curatorial staff did not believe to be credible. Frustrated, De Groft reacted by exclaiming: ‘If they’re fakes, then they’re the best damn fakes the art world has ever seen.’ De Groft’s reaction was overhead by multiple OMA employees.”

Registrar Tiffany Recicar was so disturbed that she later sent an email to De Groft, chief curator Hansen Mulford and associate curator Coralie Claeysen-Gleyzon with her concerns to make sure her objection would be noted in writing.

However, De Groft was more focused on finding Basquiat’s fingerprints on the cardboard to authenticate the art.

“Once the fingerprints are verified, FBI game over,” he emailed O’Donnell.

But the veracity of that testing also was questioned by staff, who said O’Donnell obtained a sample of what he believed to be Basquiat’s fingerprints from an unknown source on the internet and then recommended an expert whose work was careless.

“OMA employees who observed the fingerprint examination would later describe it as a farce and not legitimate,” the lawsuit states. In any case, the results were inconclusive.

Staff members also were skeptical of a poem that De Groft said cemented the connection between Basquiat and Mumford. In a staff meeting, De Groft had said the poem had been presented to one or more of the owners by Swit, the “M.A.S.H” actor who knew Mumford. But later, on a website created by O’Donnell, the poem was said to have been found in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution.

“Multiple OMA employees raised concerns about the changing provenance of the poem to De Groft, and in one instance, De Groft told an employee to ‘trash’ evidence of any version that conflicted with O’Donnell’s final essay in the Catalogue,” the lawsuit states.

What about the board?

The lawsuit indicates that the board was seemingly unaware of anything amiss throughout the internal strife. In fact, it was curiously passive about De Groft’s plans.

Displaying the Basquiats and other high-profile exhibits proposed by De Groft meant ripping up the previously approved exhibition schedule.

“To do so, De Groft circumvented the Collections and Exhibitions Committee, the standing committee of the OMA Board responsible for reviewing, considering and approving actions necessary to the furtherance and benefit of the collection and exhibitions of OMA,” the lawsuit says. “De Groft also circumvented OMA’s professional curatorial staff, who reported that exhibitions take two to three years to curate — not the five months that De Groft was proposing.”

Although De Groft could overrule the curatorial staff he oversaw, it’s unclear how he could circumvent the board of trustees — though, in part, he did so by not passing along information, the lawsuit says.

In one instance, a former winner of the museum’s annual Florida Prize in contemporary art wrote to Mulford, the chief curator, to express doubts about the art after seeing some of the advance media coverage.

“The two images being shared publicly so far seem like fake Basquiats,” the artist wrote. “Basquiat never painted hands the way it is being shown here.”

Mulford dutifully passed along the artist’s email to De Groft, who praised his employee as the “quiet smart one of us” in a return message. He told Mulford, who quietly retired this year after more than 40 years with the museum: “Hope it does not all blow up. Need your help. You are stuck with me.”

De Groft did not report the concerns of staff members and others to board members, the lawsuit alleges, though sources have told the Orlando Sentinel that board chair Cynthia Brumback was warned that the exhibition was questionable. Apparently, Brumback did not share those warnings.

Relations with the FBI

Brumback, who resigned from the board in December, was aware of the FBI’s subpoenas received in July 2021, and she recommended telling the FBI about the fingerprint analysis the museum was carrying out on the artwork — but was overruled by De Groft and O’Donnell.

“I firmly believe that reaching out to the FBI at this point for any reason is ill advised,” wrote O’Donnell in a sternly worded email. “In the vernacular, that sleeping dog should not be disturbed. ... There is no good that can come from contacting them.”

He was particularly adamant about not telling the FBI of the testing ahead of time, writing that “informing the FBI in advance that you are going to do this analysis (or are thinking of doing it) is also ill advised. You never do something like this until you know the answer. As we discussed, a positive match may be something that you decide to share with the FBI, but only if and when you get it.”

That positive match did not happen.

In his reply, De Groft was at pains to clarify that he agreed with O’Donnell. Notifying the FBI “was suggested by the lawyers,” he wrote. “I was against. It. (sic) A small thing but important.”

De Groft had already disregarded multiple instructions from the FBI not to disclose its investigation or the subpoenas. The lawsuit says De Groft forwarded the subpoenas to O’Donnell within half an hour of receiving them and quickly followed up with his own message: “I just received a federal subpoena. Need to talk. ASAP.”

O’Donnell would forward the subpoena to a California attorney, the lawsuit says, who had not been engaged by the museum. But first, he responded to De Groft: “(w)e will get through this TOGETHER!!!”

The lawsuit says that De Groft kept O’Donnell in the loop throughout the investigation, discussing OMA’s compliance with the FBI subpoenas against the agency’s confidentiality directives and disclosing privileged OMA attorney-client information. In one message, he related that the FBI “will not discuss with our legal team the details of their inquiry at this time. Not bad news, just is what it is for now.”

Meanwhile, the subpoena included De Groft’s cell phone, but he reported that a “catastrophic event” had destroyed his phone’s data two days before the FBI got in touch.

The lawsuit says De Groft’s actions — including opening copying two of the owners on an FBI email that expressly asked him not to do so — soured relations between the museum and the law enforcement agency.

“De Groft again violated the FBI’s direction and ignored his fiduciary duties to OMA,” the lawsuit reads, “effectively severing any semblance of trust between OMA and the FBI.”

Board still in the dark

After receiving the subpoenas, De Groft and Brumback hired the Akerman law firm — also representing the museum in its lawsuit.

“After counsel was retained,” the lawsuit says, “a communication was drafted to inform the OMA Board at large about the retention and the FBI subpoenas, but the communication was never sent.”

Board members would not find out about the FBI investigation and subpoenas until it was revealed in newspaper reports.

The suit says that staff members were afraid to approach board members on their own with their objections to the exhibit.

“The OMA Board at large only later discovered the concerns of its curatorial staff and key employees after the Exhibition opened, largely because De Groft’s conduct during the curation of the Exhibition and creation of the Catalogue discouraged transparency and whistleblowing,” it states. “OMA employees were under the impression that De Groft was ‘working for’ the Owner Defendants, and they feared for their jobs and professional reputations if they did anything to speak out against the Exhibition.”

And so “Heroes & Monsters” moved forward, opening Feb. 11, 2022, with a splashy gala. Four months later, FBI agents were stripping the artwork off the museum’s walls.

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