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Ex-Florida Art Museum Director Linked to Basquiat Forgery Investigation Dead at Age 59

Writer's picture: The Big Magazine StaffThe Big Magazine Staff

By The Big Magazine Staff


Aaron De Groft, the former director of the Orlando Museum of Art, who left the institution in 2022 after an FBI raid connected to an art fraud probe involving more than 24 fake Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings, has passed away at the age of 59.


Aaron De Groft
former head of the Orlando Museum of Art, Aaron De Groft, dead at age 59 Photo: Melanie Met/The New York Times/Redux

De Groft died last weekend after a brief illness, the Neptune Society, a cremation service provider, said without providing further details. The Orlando Sentinel also reported that his wife, Kathryn Lee De Groft, had submitted an obituary to the news outlet.


“We were saddened to hear about the passing of Aaron De Groft," the museum said in an emailed statement. "Our thoughts are with his family at this time of loss.”


De Groft became executive director of the Orlando Museum of Art in 2021 following art museum administration jobs in Jacksonville, Sarasota, and Williamsburg, Virginia.


The focus of the investigation was an exhibition called “Heroes & Monsters,” an unveiling of what the museum said were 26 never-seen-before paintings by the late neoexpressionist painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. The problem, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles wrote last year, is that the paintings weren’t real Basquiats. Most of the featured works, they said, had been created more than two decades after Basquiat’s death by two men who sold them on eBay.


The scandal scared off many of the museum’s donors and led to the firing of Aaron De Groft.


In early 2022, the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) aimed for the Basquiat exhibition “Heroes & Monsters” to gain national and international attention, as well as draw in a younger and more diverse audience. Basquiat’s graffiti-inspired style and tragic life contributed to his status as an international phenomenon. Basquiat, the Brooklyn-born son of a Haitian father and Puerto Rican mother, first showcased his work at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1981, at the age of 21. The exhibit, “New York New Wave,” also included other avant-garde artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.


Since Basquiat's death from an overdose in 1988, both his popularity and worth of his paintings have continued to increase. In 2017, a Basquiat piece was purchased by a Japanese collector for $110 million. Celebrities continue to collect his works including rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z, who owns at least one Basquiat.


The museum advertised “Heroes & Monsters” as “a unique set of paintings from a private collection being displayed for the first time.” This was because no other museum wanted to take the risk. As per the lawsuit, a New York art dealer contacted Orlando’s city-owned Mennello Museum of American Art in 2019 to exhibit some of these alleged Basquiats, but the museum's director refused the offer due to doubts about the collection's authenticity.


De Groft insisted that the paintings are real Basquiat works, casting himself as a raider of lost art and claiming also to have access to previously unknown works by artists ranging from Italian Renaissance painter Titian to American drip painter Jackson Pollock.


However, the FBI affidavit used to secure the 2022 warrant for seizing the art clearly indicates that De Groft's discovery of the Basquiat pieces had been suspected of being counterfeit for a long time. The FBI's special art fraud unit first became aware of the paintings in 2013.


Reports of the fake Basquiats are extensively documented. One piece was painted on a FedEx box featuring a logo that was not introduced until six years after Basquiat's death. The individual who allegedly hid the paintings and another — who claimed to have discovered them after purchasing the contents of an abandoned Los Angeles storage unit — provided sworn statements asserting that neither story was accurate. Thaddeus Mumford, the original owner of the storage unit, stated he did not know Basquiat and never stored the paintings.


It was later revealed that Michael Barzman, who claimed to have purchased the storage unit's contents at an auction, confessed to the FBI that he and a friend had forged them. He mentioned that some were completed in as little as five minutes.


Barzman was sentenced to probation and community service for lying to the FBI.


“Heroes & Monsters” originally was scheduled to run through June 2023. But when the FBI learned in May 2022 that the exhibition they seized the paintings.


The museum incurred over $300,000 in legal expenses to comply with the FBI subpoenas, and the criminal investigation is still ongoing. OMA initiated a civil lawsuit against De Groft and the owners of the alleged Basquiat paintings. In January, the museum dismissed all defendants except De Groft, citing the litigation costs of pursuing numerous individuals, it states. De Groft filed a countersuit against OMA for wrongful termination and defamation.


De Groft is survived by his wife and two children.


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