Aaron De Groft, who was the director of the Orlando Museum of Art (OMA) when the institution came under fire for exhibiting fake Basquiats, died on Saturday, January 18 after battling a brief illness, according to an obituary published yesterday. He was 59 years old.
De Groft was ousted from his role at the helm of the OMA in 2022, accused of knowingly showing fake Basquiat works in an exhibition earlier that year.
Before his tumultuous tenure at the Orlando institution, De Groft built his reputation as a curator and director at institutions in Florida including the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota. At the College of William and Mary’s Muscarelle Museum of Art, he oversaw more than a decade of programming focusing on European Renaissance and Baroque art including the traveling show Leonardo da Vinci and the Idea of Beauty (2015) and Botticelli and the Search for the Divine: Florentine Painting between the Medici and the Bonfires of the Vanities (2017).
De Groft took on the role of director at the OMA in 2021 with the goal of expanding the museum’s profile by organizing more shows with prominent artists. But this pursuit quickly unraveled with the infamous 2022 exhibition Heroes and Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection, which claimed to present a rare group of never-before-seen Basquiat works that had supposedly been discovered in the storage unit of a Los Angeles screenwriter. The Federal Bureau of Investigations became suspicious of the works’ authenticity, issuing a subpoena that spring and seizing 25 works.
The paintings were confirmed to be forgeries, resulting in major fallout for the museum as funders withdrew donations. The OMA then fired and sued De Groft for allegedly planning to pocket a portion of the forged paintings’ sales and for “permanently damag[ing]” the museum’s reputation, claims the ousted director denied.
In November 2023, he filed a counterclaim against OMA for wrongful termination, calling the museum’s accusations “a damnable and demonstrable lie” orchestrated by the board of trustees in an effort to “scapegoat” him.
“I am ready to talk and going to war to get my good name back, my professional standing and personal and professional exoneration,” De Groft wrote in an email to Hyperallergic at the time of the countersuit.
Both OMA’s suit and De Groft’s countersuit are still pending. Due to Florida’s “survival statute,” which stipulates that “no cause of action dies with the person,” the claims can still proceed even after De Groft’s death.
“We were saddened to hear about the passing of Aaron De Groft. Our thoughts are with his family at this time of loss,” a representative for OMA told Hyperallergic.
