CROSSING INTERNATIONAL BORDERS…NOT DELANCEY: Pierce O’Donnell’s Basquiat Orlando Museum essay appears to acknowledge “transnational involvement” by John Leo Mangan III (AKA “Lee Mangin) in his effort to authenticate “art” purported to be “lost Basquiats”
Where I can in this piece, I’m quoting directly from O’Donnell’s exhibition catalog essay.
Here’s the foundation of the scheme: the origin stories of 25 paintings now on display in the Orlando Museum of Art as “lost Basquiats” are identical to a painting nearly auctioned in 2018 by a Scottsdale, Arizona, auction house.
“Billy” (Michael William Force) owns six of the paintings, which he bought from a “local art dealer”.
That explanation in identical to one that I revealed in 2018, on a crime/fraud blog (“Glistening, Quivering Underbelly”) that I wrote from 2012 through December 2021.
In that 2018 story, Taryn Burns, identified above by O’Donnell as “Billy’s” “life partner”, intervened to kill an auction of a “Basquiat” painting on plywood, called “Helicopter”. Burns directly facilitated Pierce O’Donnell’s legal services on behalf of a criminal named Lu Quan, who loaned “Helicopter” to another criminal — David Damante.
O’Donnell personally extricated Quan from the messy controversy of the painting’s provenance, which included the assertion the “work of art” was “originally purchased from “storage lockers located at Ortiz Bros. Moving and Storage” — the same location O’Donnell stated the Orlando 25 “lost Basquiats” languished for nearly 30 years.
And that is not a coincidence.
Here’s the “Provenance” Burns sent me in July 2018:
Back to the border: “Lee” (convicted felon John Leo Mangan III) had “engaged” a Toronto “art dealer” named Jason Halter to “market the 19 paintings”.
And Halter just happened to be the “owner of his own collection of uncatalogued Basquiat drawings”, including “painted drums and a baseball”.
Yeah, right!
Halter calls himself a life-long admirer of Basquiat’s work, who’s amassed not only “traditional canvas paintings by the artist, but even two drums and a baseball”.
Halter is an architect who, according to a September 12, 2017 CBC News story, ultimately made the trip south into the United States at “Lee’s” request.
What a shame “Lee” had to go outside the United States to find his “authenticators”, especially when one (“art dealer” Talin Maltepe) was snagged by U.S. immigration officials on September 11, 2018 at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and finally escorted out of the terminal— one day before an important meeting in New York City.
But don’t worry about Talin Maltepe crossing the Canada-United States border: she was celebrating in Orlando, along with Pierce O’Donnell (center) and New York art world luftmensch Gene Seidman.
Seidman helped O’Donnell pimp the collection via a video available at this link.
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
