WOULD YOU CARE TO REPHRASE YOUR TESTIMONY, MR. O’DONNELL? Mumford 2008 Bankruptcy Bombshell Blows Up Verkakte Origin Story For Orlando Museum of Art’s “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection”

MUMFORD’S 2008 CHAPTER 7 BANKRUPTCY FILING DOES NOT CITE POTENTIALLY VALUABLE “BASQUIAT PAINTINGS” IN PERSONAL PROPERTY DECLARATION; BANKRUPTCY TRUSTEE OVERSAW DISTRIBUTION OF ASSETS UNTIL CASE CLOSED IN 2014

Looks like we might be able to stick a fork in this mess: the origin story of the “Thaddeus Mumford, Jr. Venice Collection” on display at the Orlando Museum of Art just crashed and burned — on December 31, 2008, Mumford filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in California’s Central District.

It appears there is no evidence supporting the assertion Mumford had a cache of “lost Basquiats” in a storage facility.

David A. Gill, the bankruptcy Trustee overseeing Mumford’s case, left no stone unturned in a 28-page “Final Report”, which did not list “Ortiz Brothers Moving and Storage” as an outstanding debt in its official claims register.

If Mumford truly held any valuable items, the Trustee would have sold them to pay Mumford’s debts.

The long and contorted “Orlando Basquiat” story balanced on the fulcrum of a storage locker and a dead screenwriter.

A lengthy essay in the Orlando exhibit’s catalogue, written by Los Angeles attorney, Pierce O’Donnell, introduced “the true story” of an improbable odyssey to authenticate the “Mumford 25”.

A man identified by O’Donnell as William Force, a “Massachusetts treasure hunter” and Lee Mangin, Force’s “financial backer”, purchased the lot of 25 “lost Basquiat” paintings in 2012 at a storage unit auction in Los Angeles.

All of the paintings were said to have been created in late 1982 while Basquiat, then 22, was living and working out of a studio space beneath Larry Gagosian’s home in Venice, California, preparing fresh canvases for a show at the art dealer’s Los Angeles gallery.

I’ll let O’Donnell tell the story:

It looks like O’Donnell is as “FOS” as his colleague, Taryn Burns.