The entrance to an exhibit by artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is seen at the Orlando Museum of Art on June 1, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. A former Los Angeles auctioneer has agreed to plead guilty in a cross-country art fraud scheme where he created fake artwork and falsely attributed the paintings to artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The paintings ultimately wound up at the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida before they were seized by federal agents last year in a scandal that roiled the museum and led to its CEO’s departure. AP Photo/John Raoux,File
A former Los Angeles auctioneer has agreed to plead guilty in a cross-country art fraud scheme where he created fake artwork and falsely attributed the paintings to Brooklyn-born artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
The paintings ultimately wound up at the Orlando Museum of Art in Florida before they were seized by federal agents last year in a scandal that roiled the museum and led to its CEO’s departure after he threatened an art expert and told her to “shut up.”
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. The Orlando Museum of Art scandal came in 2022 when a federal raid ended in the seizure of 25 paintings whose authenticity had been in question for a decade. The museum had been the first to display the artwork, and its former director had previously insisted the artwork was legitimate.
Defendant Michael Barzman, 45, was charged Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles with making false statements to the FBI during an interview last year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release. He has agreed to plead guilty and faces up to five years in prison.
Barzman’s court date has not been scheduled. Barzman admitted that he and another man, identified only as…
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