LOST AND FOUND AND LOST…AND THEN FOUND AGAIN?: It Appears The “Lost Basquiat” Collection On Display At The Orlando Museum Of Art Had Already Been “Found” Once Before & Offered For Sale As The “Mumford Collection: Borgia Trust Archive” By Two Canadians
“Lee had been working to prepare the Mumford Collection for a potential sale with Talin Maltepe of Sevan Art Gallery. Maltepe is a prominent art consultant, dealer and broker based in Toronto. She has a unique niche in the art world, specializing in consulting on due diligence for paintings that are not catalogued. She, in turn, brought in a colleague, Jason Halter, a respected architect who also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto teaching architecture, landscape, and design.”
On January 7, 2018, an Indiana woman known professionally as Dorothy M. Geisler-Tragardh died of cancer.
Known among her friends in the art world as Torie Geisler, she graduated from the Pepperdine University School of Law in 1983.
And, like some attorneys, she was also a criminal.
Geisler was a founding partner in Praxis Resource Partners LLC in September 2006 and, as executive vice president, was responsible for raising money from investors. She deposited money from the stock sales into an account at Symphony Bank in Carmel, where co-defendant Jan Marten was one of the founding board members.
The account paid $752,618.24 to Geisler, mostly for the purchase of her home a year ago, the complaint said. An additional $75,000 went to Marten, $25,000 to her Carmel jewelry business, J.S. Marten Inc., and $11,475 to her husband and co-defendant, Chris Marten.
Geisler hired Chris Marten as a consultant for Praxis, and the two sold shares of the $56 stock but distributed shares of the cheaper stock, according to a complaint filed March 11, 2009 by Indiana Securities Commissioner Chris Naylor in Marion Superior Court.
The complaint alleged the couple participated in a $2 million investment fraud orchestrated by Geistler.
Geisler settled that case and reached a plea agreement in a separate criminal inquiry. She was sentenced in 2011 to one year of home detention, four years on probation, and ordered to pay $1,920,000 in restitution.
Indiana state prosecutors charged the Martens with tax evasion in October 2008, saying they failed to remit $875,230.36 in retail sales tax to the state over three years. Hamilton Superior Judge William Hughes dismissed the criminal case in October 2010, saying the government abused the discovery process.
The tax fraud case filed against the couple left unlitigated the merits of the tax charges themselves. Hughes dismissed the charges with prejudice, which prevented prosecutors from refiling the case.
But Torie purportedly had a trove of 25 paintings she’d purchased from a storage locker previously owned by Thaddeus Mumford. In the year before she died, Geisler enlisted the assistance of Talin Maltepe and Jason Halter to sell her paintings.
The Geisler/Borgia Trust Archive’s “LA ‘82” catalogue cover even used the same painting the Orlando Museum of Art is now using to promote its “Heroes & Monsters” exhibit.
According to Los Angeles attorney, Pierce O’Donnell (writing in the exhibition’s catalogue), the painting, dubbed “Industry Insider/Big Head with TV”, drew the attention of Diego Cortez, the filmmaker and curator known for launching the career of Jean-Michel Basquiat.
In 2018, Cortez was in New York City’s Crozier Fine Arts to review the 19 paintings and the poem owned by “Lee Mangin”, a convicted drug smuggler whose real name is John Leo Mangan III.
“Cortez stopped and studied the Industry Insider/Big Head with TV
painting for several minutes, his keen practiced eyes moving to every
corner. As he examined it, he leaned toward LiPuma and said, “This
one’s gonna make people talk. I wish I had this painting. You’re prob-
ably sitting on over twenty million dollars with this one alone.”
Really?
So who are the missing links? Could one of them be “Billy” or “Lee” or even “Taryn”?
This happened well before Diego Cortez met on September 12, 2018 with “Lee Mangin” (John Leo Mangan III), Jason Halter and Mangan’s attorney, Richard LiPuma (trustee for the “2022 Mumford Collection” paintings”),
at the Chelsea storage facility of Crozier Fine Arts to review the 25 works now on display in Orlando. (Maltepe was not allowed to cross the border after she was snagged by U.S. immigration officials on September 11, 2018 at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and escorted out of the terminal — one day before the important meeting with Cortez in New York City.)
Huh?
In the words of Los Angeles attorney, Pierce O’Donnell, here’s how it supposedly happened in 2018:
“After his initial review, Cortez spent time with each painting, making a more detailed examination. Then, as the group became more comfortable with each other, the discussion devolved to stories of the old days, memories of the Mudd Club, the wild parties, the celebrity interactions, and a virtual verbal postcard in remembrance of the glory of New York City in the 1980s. A couple of hours later, as Cortez left the viewing room at Croziers, he again confided in LiPuma. “These are great works, and I just want to let you know I’m planning to give them a favorable review.” True to his word, Cortez then wrote an opinion letter certifying the authenticity of the collection of paintings, and he also wrote a separate certification letter for each individual work and the poem.”
So who are the missing links? Could one of them be “Billy” or “Lee” or even “Taryn”?
There are direct links to the grifters now involved in the Orlando collection.
Torie Geisler’s mother, Margaret Ann Geisler, passed away on December 12, 2013.
One of those who added condolences to the family, via the obituary, was Taryn Burns, the woman identified by Pierce O’Donnell as “Billy’s” life-partner, “Taryn”.
Burns plays an crucially important role in the 2022 version of this collection, dubbed by O’Donnell the “Basquiat Venice Collection Group” — the more bougie-sounding “Borgia Trust Archive” had been grabbed.
Burns claimed in a July 17, 2017 affidavit that in October 2012, her “partners Lu Quan and William Force purchased 26 paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat.”
Too bad no one asked Burns about Torie Geisler and the “Heroes & Monsters” dress rehearsal — “LA ’82 Jean-Michel Basquiat”.
Investigation, anyone?
