The Curious Case of the Cardboard Basquiats

A show of “lost” works by the celebrated artist Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Orlando Museum of Art was meant to be a blockbuster. Then the feds came knocking

- By Nate Freeman

ON A FRIDAY IN JUNE 2022, A SWARM OF FEDERAL AGENTS PILED OUT OF GOVERNMENT VANS AND INTO THE ORLANDO MUSEUM OF ART, A 98-YEAR-OLD institution abutted by several lakes. The feds moved past staffers and crowds there to see “Heroes & Monsters,” an exhibition filled with what were billed as never-before-seen works by Jean-Michel Basquiat. When the show had opened several months earlier, thousands came through in its first few days. Attendance was up 500 percent during the exhibition.

But questions about the authenticity of the works had dogged the show, and now the feds had arrived, warrant in hand, seemingly confirming the doubters. The day before the raid, a US magistrate judge had signed an application to secure a search warrant filed by the FBI’s Art Crime Team that indicated the works on the wall could actually be contraband— “fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed,” as the application put it. The agents proceeded to strip the walls while visitors there to peruse and spend money at the gift shop stocked with Basquiat-themed merch looked on. By that evening it was national news.