An expert whose comments appeared to give credibility to the purported Jean-Michel Basquiat paintings seized from Orlando Museum of Art by the FBI has released a lengthy statement in which she says an owner of the art misled her, charges the former museum director with bullying her, and says she flat-out rejected nine of the works in reports that were meant to be confidential.
Jordana Moore Saggese, a University of Maryland professor and author of two books on Basquiat, objects to the way excerpts from reports she prepared for the artworks’ owners were used in the “Heroes & Monsters: Jean-Michel Basquiat” exhibition catalog, published by the museum.
Saggese released the statement through her lawyers at California-based Cypress LLP “to set the record straight,” she wrote.
“I am extremely distressed by news reports regarding my alleged involvement with the Exhibit and specifically, the false allegations that I attributed all 25 OMA works to Basquiat,” she stated. “These claims are false and their publication caused me substantial reputational damage and emotional distress.”
But Pierce O’Donnell, a Los Angeles attorney with a 10% ownership stake in the art, says he did not mislead the scholar and was entitled to use Saggese’s work as he saw fit.
“I never misled Dr. Saggese,” he wrote in an email to the Orlando Sentinel. “She issued a 73-page report on November 30, 2017 in which she made detailed, unqualified findings that as to each of the six paintings owned by our...
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