Orlando Museum Of Art Director Out Amid FBI Probe

ORLANDO, FL — Aaron De Groft, director and CEO at the Orlando Museum of Art, has parted ways with the museum amid an FBI investigation into the authenticity of paintings attributed to the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat that were part of an exhibit at the museum.

The FBI seized 25 paintings in a raid at the museum Friday as part of the investigation into wire fraud and conspiracy.

The museum's board is concerned about the investigation and doubts about the paintings' authenticity as well as an email sent by De Groft to an academic art expert in response to her request for her name to be removed from promotions for the exhibit, the museum board's chairperson, Cynthia Brumback, said in an email to the Associated Press.

In the email, De Groft threatened to tell the woman's employer she was paid $60,000 to write a report on the pieces, according to a search warrant released on the day of the raid.

The board's statement did not specify whether De Groft had been fired or if he had resigned.

Basquiat rose to prominence as part of the Neo-expressionism movement in the 1980s and died from a drug overdose at age 27 in 1988. Many of his paintings provided social commentary on racism, colonialism and power structures.

The paintings being challenged were discovered in 2012 in a storage locker in Los Angeles, and questions about their authenticity were raised shortly after. The artwork is touted as being created in 1982, but experts have pointed out that one of the pieces contains FedEx typeface that didn't exist until 1994, according to the warrant.

Prior to his 2018 death, the owner of the storage locker, Thad Mumford, told investigators that he had never owned any Basquiat art and that the pieces were not in the locker the prior time he had visited.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.