The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Orlando Museum of Art Friday, taking away all 25 pieces that were once part of an exhibit about the life and work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, the museum said.
The New York Times has previous report that the FBI’s Art crime squad investigated the authenticity of 25 paintings the museum says were created by Basquiat and were exhibition there for many months.
A museum spokesman said Friday that it had complied with the FBI’s request for access to the “Heroes and Monsters” exhibit, and that the exhibit is now in the possession of the FBI. .
“It is important to note that we have not yet been led to believe that the museum has been or is the subject of any investigation,” spokeswoman Emilia Bourmas-Fry said in an emailed statement. . “We continue to treat our participation purely as a factual witness.”
The Basquiat exhibition has been set to close on June 30, and the works are scheduled to have their next exhibition in Italy. Museum officials said they will continue to cooperate with authorities.
According to museum employees, more than a dozen FBI agents visited the museum on Friday morning. They walked through its front door, filed a warrant, and then quickly began removing 25 paintings from the museum’s walls. The museum quickly closed to the public, as curious visitors peered through the now locked entrance and gathered outside and FBI agents boxed the paintings and transferred them to the waiting car at the loading dock. Museum.
FBI Spokesperson confirmed that a federal search warrant was executed Friday at the museum and said the Art Crime Squad’s investigation was continuing.
The unsealed search warrant, which The Times reviewed, was signed by a judge on Thursday. The 41-page affidavit was issued on the basis of two possible crimes: Conspiracy and electronic fraud. In the documents, the FBI said it was investigating the exhibition and attempted sale of 25 paintings, and said its investigation had revealed, among other things, “misinformation regarding the previous ownership of the paintings.”
The paintings in the exhibition “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat” are said by the museum and their owners to have been recovered from a Los Angeles archive in 2012. The works are largely was not seen before the show opened in February.
A Times Reports published that month raised questions about their veracity. It noted that one of the artworks painted on the back of the cardboard shipping box had the instructions “Align the top of the FedEx Shipping Label Here,” in a typeface that one designer once wrote. work for Federal Express said was not used until 1994 – six years after Basquiat’s death.
The owners of the paintings, and the director and chief executive officer of the Orlando museum, Aaron De Groft, both confirmed that the works were real. No one immediately responded to a request for comment on the seizure of the paintings.
Both De Groft and the owner say the works, done on scavenged pieces of cardboard, were made by Basquiat in late 1982 while he was living and working in a studio underneath his Los Angeles home. art dealer Larry Gagosian and prepare for a show at Gagosian’s gallery. They say Basquiat sold the work for $5,000 to a deceased television screenwriter, Thad Mumfordwho put them in a storage unit and apparently forgot about them for 30 years – until the unit’s contents were seized for non-rental payments and auctioned off in 2012. (Gagosian said he ” find the scenario of the story highly unlikely.”) In the affidavit for the search warrant, Elizabeth Rivas, an FBI agent, wrote that she interviewed Mumford in 2014 and learned of it. “Mumford had never purchased Basquiat’s artwork and was unaware of any Basquiat artwork lying in his archives.”
The paintings were purchased by William Force, an antiques and art dealer, and Leo Mangan, a retired salesman, for about $15,000. Pierce O’Donnell, a lawyer, later took an interest in six of the 25 works and hired several experts who said the works appeared authentic. The owners did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.
Basquiat’s Real Estate endorsement committee disbanded in 2012, when many artists stopped trying to endorse works because of costly litigation.
According to Putnam Fine Art and Antique Appraisals, the Putnam antiquities and fine arts appraisal company will be worth about $100 million. The owners have said in previous interviews that they are trying to sell the works.
The willful sale of art that is believed to be counterfeit is a federal crime.
