ORLANDO, Fla. — Lawsuits filed in relation to a 2022 scandal involving allegations of phony artwork on display at the Orlando Museum of Art have recently been dropped.
According to The Associated Press, OMA and the estate of the museum’s former director, Aaron De Groft, have agreed to dismiss lawsuits against each other.
De Groft died last month at the age of 59 after a brief illness.
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The drama unfolded a few years earlier when the FBI raided the museum and seized potentially fake Jean-Michael Basquiat works of art.
Basquiat, a Neo-expressionist painter whose success came during the 1980s, lived and worked in New York before he died in 1988 at age 27 from a drug overdose.
In 2023, federal investigators announced that a former Los Angeles auctioneer agreed to plead guilty in a cross-country art fraud scheme that led to paintings being seized from the Orlando museum.
In a recent statement obtained by the AP, OMA said that the dismissal has ended all litigation between the two parties, and further read, “It is OMA’s sincere hope that this step will allow OMA to continue forward with its mission in partnership with its valued constituencies.”
The museum had accused De Groft of not fulfilling his fiduciary duty to the museum by championing the exhibit, while De Groft claimed his firing was unjust, the AP reported.
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