IF IT’S MONDAY, IT’S BS DETECTOR DAY AT THE ORLANDO MUSEUM OF ART: Get Your Stories Straight!

No, it’s not really like “Indiana Jones digging for lost artifacts”.

The controversy surrounding the Orlando Museum of Art’s “Heroes & Monsters” exhibit, showcasing “25 never-before-seen paintings” by Jean-Michel Basquiat is rather an idiotic farce populated by jokers who can’t seem to get their stories straight.

For example, take the tale of an “untitled poem written by Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1982”.

Among the documentation Los Angeles attorney Pierce O’Donnell presented in an effort to authenticate the “Basquiat Venice Collection Group” is a 21-line, typed poem discovered in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution.

Shown below, as excerpted directly from documents O’Donnell himself provided to the museum, the poem is cited in an effort to support the assertion that Thaddeus Mumford purchased the paintings on exhibit directly from Basquiat in 1982.

Between late 1982-early 1983 in Venice, California, Basquiat worked from the ground-floor gallery and studio space art dealer Larry Gagosian had built below his home. Basquiat worked producing what was to be an extraordinary series of paintings. They were for a March 1983 show, his second at the Larry Gagosian Gallery in West Hollywood.

But Pierce O’Donnell insists that Basquiat needed cash so badly he sold 25 paintings to Thaddeus Mumford “out the back door” —for $5,000.

As insane as that claim sounds, the Basquiat Venice Collection Group authentication documents, underwritten by O’Donnell, uses the Smithsonian Institution letter as “proof” of that transaction.

In the excerpt below, the official Basquiat Venice Collection Group’s documentation makes its case.

(If only “Lee Mangin” had read this document more closely — or read it at all.)

“Mangin” is the assumed name used by John Leo Mangan III (AKA Leo J. Mangan AKA Lee Tucker) for press interviews promoting the collection and its exhibition in Orlando.

Over the last 40+ years, Mangan has been a drug smuggler (with two federal convictions), a penny-stock swindler, and the subject of an FTC action against Debt-Set, a Colorado company Mangan ran with his wife, Shelley.

A resident of Boulder, Colorado, Mangan’s adult children (through the “MJL Family Trust LLC”) own 19 of the 25 paintings currently on exhibit in Orlando.

Mangan clearly went “off book”, answering questions without his script.

From the February 16, 2022 New York Times story:

“But the foremost proof in De Groft’s mind was a short poem by Mumford in 1982 commemorating the artworks’ creation and the meeting that the owners say occurred between Basquiat, then an artist on the rise, and Mumford, then one of the few Black screenwriters working within network TV and riding high as a producer and writer for the top-rated M*A*S*H.

Lines from the poem seem to refer both to Mumford’s ’70s work voicing a “Dr. Thad” for “Sesame Street,” his upcoming script for the “M*A*S*H” series finale, the “25 paintings bringing riches,” and the two men’s shared spirit as “no longer outsiders, Industry insiders golden crowns receiving … We film, we write, we film, we paint.”

It is said to have been written and typed up by Mumford, then initialed in oilstick by Basquiat (and confirmed as genuine by Blanco). The poem was not in Mumford’s storage locker contents, according to Mangin, but was handed to him by Mumford in 2012. After buying the paintings, Mangin said he and Force tracked down the screenwriter, who told them over lunch how he had bought the Basquiats in 1982 as an investment on the recommendation of a friend.”

So is the poem part of the Smithsonian Institution collection, as claimed by O’Donnell’s research, or is it in the breast pocket of the suit jacket John Leo Mangan III wore the day in 2012 he had lunch with Thaddeus Mumford, who gave him the original?

Sometimes this shit just writes itself!