Orlando Museum Sues over Fake Basquiat Paintings

We don’t read much about museum shenanigans such as theft, fraud, or romantic entanglements, but they do indeed happen. More often than not, trustees and senior administrators deal with them quietly and gingerly. These days, it’s harder to keep mischief from morphing into a scandal. Two stories, for instance, made it to the realm of headlines over the past week.

In 2022, “la merde” went nuclear at the Orlando Museum of Art over a much-touted exhibition there of 25 paintings claimed to be by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988). Unknown for years, they were, the museum claimed, painted in 1982, sold by the then-ascending artist to Thaddeus Mumford, a producer and one of the lead writers for the TV show M*A*S*H and kept for 30 years in Mumford’s storage locker. Sinking into dementia, Mumford stopped paying his monthly storage rent around 2012. He died in 2018.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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We don’t read much about museum shenanigans such as theft, fraud, or romantic entanglements, but they do indeed happen. More often than not, trustees and senior administrators deal with them quietly and gingerly. These days, it’s harder to keep mischief from morphing into a scandal. Two stories, for instance, made it to the realm of headlines over the past week.

In 2022, “la merde” went nuclear at the Orlando Museum of Art over a much-touted exhibition there of 25 paintings claimed to be by Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988). Unknown for years, they were, the museum claimed, painted in 1982, sold by the then-ascending artist to Thaddeus Mumford, a producer and one of the lead writers for the TV show M*A*S*H and kept for 30 years in Mumford’s storage locker. Sinking into dementia, Mumford stopped paying his monthly storage rent around 2012. He died in 2018.