Orlando Museum of Art ex-director: Basquiat plea deal a ‘cover-up’

Nearly a year after he was fired from Orlando Museum of Art in the aftermath of an FBI raid on the Loch Haven Park institution, former director Aaron De Groft has broken his silence on the discredited “Heroes & Monsters” exhibition of art attributed to Jean-Michel Basquiat.

De Groft spoke with a Vanity Fair reporter as part of a detailed article, found on vanityfair.com, about the scandal that broke after the FBI shut down the museum’s exhibition as part of an investigation into the art’s authenticity. In April, Los Angeles auctioneer Michael Barzman admitted to helping forge some of the works featured in the exhibition.

But De Groft told Vanity Fair he continues to stand behind the exhibit and accused Barzman of making up his story.

“He did not forge them,” he told Vanity Fair reporter Nate Freeman, an expert on the contemporary-art scene. “I think this is a totally sweet-deal cover-up.”

In the magazine article, De Groft also sheds light on his termination from the museum while he was vacationing in Italy, brags about giving the staff raises and providing maternity leave to female employees and laments the damage done to his career by the scandal.

“It’s like, ‘Oh, Aaron’s just a bad guy that ruined the museum,’” he told Freeman. “I just want my reputation back.”

The Vanity Fair article reflects the continuing worldwide fascination with Basquiat, a critically acclaimed street artist who rose to fame in the contemporary art world of the 1980s and died at the height of his fame from a heroin overdose at age 27 in 1988.

A new exhibition that reunites eight commissioned Basquiats is making international headlines. “Basquiat: The Modena Paintings” will open next month at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland. Among its works: “The Guilt of Gold Teeth,” which sold for $40 million at Christie’s in 2021.

At an auction last month, a 1983 Basquiat painting titled “El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile)” sold for $67 million. That’s only the fourth-highest price paid for a Basquiat work. (The record is $110.5 million for an untitled work auctioned in 2017.)

Other major exhibitions of his work are on view. Through July 31, The Grand LA in Los Angeles hosts “Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure,” a collection of more than 200 rare works organized by his sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux.

“Painting with Four Hands,” a look at works created during a collaborative period between Basquiat and pop artist Andy Warhol, can be seen until Aug. 28 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. That partnership inspired a play, “The Collaboration,” which ended its Broadway run earlier this year with Orlando native Jeremy Pope starring as Basquiat.

Orlando Museum of Art spokeswoman Maureen Walsh did not comment on the Vanity Fair article but provided a copy of the statement given to reporter Freeman. It mirrored an earlier statement released to the Orlando Sentinel and other media outlets where the museum expressed hope the FBI probe would bring “justice to all victims.”

In its statement, the museum also revealed its board was undergoing governance training and had adopted new personnel policies with enhanced whistleblower protections.

The museum had contracted Akerman law firm to conduct an internal investigation on how the scandal came to pass, and board chairman Mark Elliott had stated its results would be shared with the community. Although the board began hearing the Akerman firm’s findings last fall, not much has been shared with the public — a situation that caused the Orlando Sentinel editorial board to take the museum to task.

In its most recent statement, the museum hinted that more information may be forthcoming. “Where such actions can be disclosed publicly, they have been and will continue to be,” the statement read. “The museum is eager for the [Department of Justice] to continue its investigation and hold those who committed crimes responsible. At the appropriate time, the museum looks forward to sharing our story regarding the works in question.”

Theresa Collington of Tucker/Hall, the crisis-management public-relations firm hired by the museum after the scandal broke, said museum leaders had nothing to add to the statement. Orlando Museum of Art recently hired Cathryn Mattson as its interim executive director and CEO; she started on the job in May.

The museum has been moving forward in other ways. It’s the first institution in the country to display the current winners of the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in an exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

The museum’s latest installment of its Florida Prize in Contemporary Art is up and running. It has instituted a new quarterly “Platform” event that spotlights local artists in a social setting. Walsh said Platform’s debut was well attended by fans of the former First Thursday series and newcomers; the next Platform event will be July 28.

But as long as the FBI investigation into the art of “Heroes & Monsters” continues and the community awaits answers from Orlando Museum of Art leadership, a shadow hangs over the institution’s efforts. According to the Vanity Fair article, which dives into deeper detail about the FBI investigation and the convoluted back story of how the art came to be discovered, De Groft is waiting, too — for his name to be cleared.

“I certainly did nothing wrong,” he says in the Vanity Fair article, referring to himself as a “scapegoat” and “sacrificial lamb” in the article. “All I did was bring an art exhibition to a regional museum and made it internationally famous.”

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