Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) has put Orlando on the art scene map by having a blockbuster showing of 25 potentially fake Jean Michel Basquiat paintings on cardboard. The New York Times investigated and now Orlando is a laughing stock in the international arts scene.

At the exhibit opening, the museum in it’s wisdom had an artist named Naderson Saint – Piere, in the lobby creating a painting in Basquiat’s style, thus demonstrating how easy it would be to forge the famous artists work.

OMA has a new and ambitious director named, Aaron De Groft, who learned all he knows about art by getting a PHD from Florida State University. He should be expert enough to spot a forgery. “Dammit Jim I am a doctor not an art expert.” At the opening of Heros and Monsters: Jean – Michel Basquiat, De Groft claimed the work on exhibit was worth $200 million dollars.

The “story” is that these were created in 1982 while Basquiat, working out of a studio space beneath Larry Gagosian’s home in Venice, California, preparing for a show at the art dealer’s Los Angeles gallery. The cardboard works are said to have been sold by Basquiat directly to the television screenwriter Thad Mumford, a producer and writer for the top-rated M*A*S*H. for $5,000 in cash without Gagosian’s knowledge.

Mumford threw the work in a storage locker and it stayed there for 30 years until he failed to pay a bill for the storage locker in 2012. Thad Mumford died on September 6, 2018. William Force, a “picker,” and his financial backer Lee Mangin, snagged the lot for $15,000.  This story of forgotten treasure in a storage locker is too good to be true. Gargosian told a reporter that he “finds the scenario of the story highly unlikely.” Gagosian, lived just one floor above Basquiat and kept close tabs on his studio progress. The provenance of the artwork is in question. Force and Mangin have not been able to find a buyer since the works legitimacy has been in question. If they could get a museum too exhibit the work it might become easier to sell.

In 2017 one of Basquiat’s paintings sold for $110.5 million at Sotheby’s which is the current auction high for an American artwork. One “proof” that the work was  created by Basquiat is a poem in which 25 paintings were mentioned. Now what rhymes with 25 paintings? The treasure hunting pickers claim it as a form of receipt. It wasn’t in the storage locker but was apparently retrieved by them from Mumford. It was signed in oil stick, JMB.

To confirm the authenticity of the artwork experts turned to the cardboard it as painted on. It is hard to differentiate cardboard of 1980s from that of today. However on the back of one of the works was a company imprint that said, “Align top of FedEx Shipping Label here.” According to Lindon Leader, an independent brand expert consulted by The Times, who was shown a photo of the cardboard, the typeface in the imprint was not used by Federal Express before 1994. He should know: that was the year he personally redesigned the company’s logo and its typefaces while working as senior design director at the Landor Associates advertising firm. “It appears to be set in the Univers 67 Bold Condensed,” Leader said of the label’s distinctive purplish font. In 1982, “They were not using Univers at that time.”

BOOM so these were created 6 years AFTER the artist’s death from an overdose on August 12, 1988.

The Orlando Weekly reported that a tipster claimed a gag order had been handed down to OMA staff by museum higher-ups and that computers had been seized from the museum by the FBI. This has not been confirmed. De Groft is doing what he can to, deny, deflect and distract as pompously as possible. This morning 18 February 2022 his story was that he was absolutely no doubt that works were genuine. By this afternoon his story changed when he told the Orlando Sentinel‘s Matt Palm, “Our job is not to authenticate art. Our job is to bring the best art to the people of Orlando and Orange County.” Ha. Yes the best Orlando can do is exhibit fake art.