Former Director of the Orlando Museum of Art, Aaron de Groft, was exhibited in 2022 as a fake FBI and came to the public in 2022. I did it. 。
A 34 -year -old wife, Katherine Lee de Groft, has issued a statement that he has died after a short illness. There was no more information about the cause of death.
In February 2022, the Orlando Museum of Art opened a 25 -painted hit exhibition in 1982 that was said to have lived in Venice, California at the age of 22.
De Groft said that BASQUIAT sold artwork, most of it was drawn in cardboard slabs, drawn in cash of $ 5,000, and had been suffering for decades in the Los Angeles storage unit. I said. In 2012, De Groft said that the storage unit was seized due to lack of payment and the content was auctioned. Not well -known dealers purchased artwork for about $ 15,000.
At the exhibition, they were said to be around 100 million worthwhile. Some members of the museum have expressed concern about their religion ITY, but were threatened by De Groft when they were rejected by the Council of the Museum and publicly broadcasted skepticism. 。
A few days after the exhibition was opened, the New York Times published an article to raise questions about paintings. This article pointed out suspected of being expressed by several curators and reported that one of the paintings was created with cardboard transport materials that include printed Fedex typefaces that were not used by the company until 1994. -Six years after Bassquia's death, 12 years later, De Groft and the owner of the painting said that the painting was made.
Four months later, the FBI attacked the museum and forfeited all 25 works. The oath statement revealed that the bureau had been investigating artwork and its owners for 10 years.
A few days later, De Groft was fired.
Later, the museum sued De Groft for fraud and said that the museum was shattered in 1999. The lawsuit accused De Gloft that he was trying to make a profit from Bassquia's future sale after helping to authenticate and raise their value by exhibiting them.
De Groft continued to claim that the work was genuine. “I did the duudency,” he told Times in 2023.
Aaron Herbert de Groft was born on December 2, 1965 in the Smith Field, Virginia, and later born in Herbert Degloft, a Marine member, Smith Field Packing Company and Mary Erendegloft's executive.
With his own admission, De Groft was an fugitive in the art world. When he was a boy, he was more likely to find a hunting game than to appear in the library. He was hired to play baseball at William & Mary University, and his athletics and careers in the major league were rare for him.
“I couldn't play baseball anymore,” he told Orlando community paper in 2021, but he had no Plan B, and he took some architectural classes and became an art history. I'm crazy. “That's right,” he said, “I was wrapped in a new museum at the time,” said the school mascarel museum.
After graduating from William & Mary in 1988, he acquired a master's degree at the University of South Carolina and his art history at Florida State University.
In 1991, he married Catherine Lee (Gardner) de Groft. She is the director of the Trinity Preparatory School library and information services in Winter Park, Florida. She survives him like her daughter, Ellie. Son, Graham. Brothers, Jason. And his parents.
De Gloft was hired as a seniorculator for the Cammer Museum in Jacksonville, Florida, and later became a deputy director and Chief curly of the John and Mable Ring Museum in Sarasota. He returned to William & Mary as an executive director of the mascarel in 2005, and had a new passion for removing artwork.
“I saw the museum business many times as a detective business,” he said, quoting his own eyes, and advertising the ability to find a masterpiece caused by a smaller name. 。
When he was hired by the Orlando Museum in 2021 as a director and highest executive officer, he promised to be a big hit show and attract the people's attention. He made that promise, but it was not the intended method of the commissioner of the museum.
After the Baskia exhibition was closed, the Los Angeles auctioner acknowledged the FBI in 2012 that he helped to create Fake Bassquia.
De Groft refuted to the museum for illegal dismissal and called their claims as “public relations stunt intended to save their faces.” He still claimed that Busquer was genuine.
He said that artworks owner had requested a forensic survey by handwritten experts. He also quoted an analysis by a Basquiar expert -a statement by a member of the currently abolished certification committee of the Bassquer Estate since the denial discovered that the painting was genuine.
De Gloft said his profession was furiously abandoned, saying, “I was abandoned by doing anything wrong.” He promised to be proven in court. A trial in Orlando was scheduled to start in October.
“I'm fighting back,” he said in an interview in 2023. “I will go to the war.”
The Orlando Museum of Art stated on Monday stating that he was sad after hearing that Dr. Aaron de Groft died. Cathryn Mattson, the current director of the museum, did not respond to comments on whether De Groft's litigation for real estate would continue. She told Orlando Sentinel that the museum board and their lawyers would meet them to “consider options.”
De Groft's lawyer, Robert Parks, did not immediately respond to a comment on comments on the client's counter suit to the museum, but he was about the De Groft family on the Sentinel. He said it was too early to make a decision. 。
The FBI art criminal team states that criminal investigations on ignorant basschians (still held by the FBI) are continuing.
