The Orlando Museum of Art filed the lawsuit Monday in state court against former CEO Aaron De Groft and others whom the museum says were involved in the scheme, seeking undisclosed damages for fraud, breach of contract and conspiracy.The 99-year-old museum, also referred to as OMA, was left with a tattered reputation that resulted in its being put on probation by the American Alliance of Museums, the lawsuit said.
Basquiat, who lived and worked in New York City, found success in the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. The Orlando Museum of Art was the first institution to display the more than two dozen artworks said to have been found in an old storage locker decades after Basquiat's 1988 death from a drug overdose at age 27.
Also, television writer Thad Mumford, the owner of the storage locker where the art was eventually found, told investigators that he had never owned any Basquiat art and that the pieces were not in the unit the last time he had visited. Mumford died in 2018.