Museum still short on progress, transparency

After the FBI scandal, Orlando Museum of Art still hasn’t done enough to rebuild trust

These are troubling times for the Orlando Museum of Art.

The museum made international headlines when the FBI seized an entire exhibit, purportedly a blockbuster collection of previously unseen works by famed artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, amidst concerns many pieces were fakes.

The incident prompted international snickering among critics who scoffed at Orlando — the theme-park town trying to tell cultural fairy tales.

But for most of the people who live here — those who truly know Central Florida’s rich cultural scene and who don’t define this community by a quick trip to Disney — the episode has been painful.

In fact, many earnest Central Floridians aren’t scoffing. They want to see the museum right the ship and succeed.

But here’s the problem: The museum and its leadership seem to be doing very little to help themselves.

The museum keeps insisting it’s focused on a rosy future, but has yet to own up to its past — and instead keeps creating even more problems.

The most recent embarrassment involved the resignation of the museum’s interim director, Luder Whitlock — a guy the museum had touted as its savior.

Last week, the Orlando Sentinel carried a story about how Whitlock had been meeting with mayors and donors to assure them everything was OK. Museum board chairwoman Cynthia Brumback also penned a guest column, telling everyone the museum was now under “Dr. Whitlock’s steady command.”

Six days later, Whitlock resigned.

Talk about a red flag. Meanwhile, other board members say they’ve been told to keep their mouths shut. Said one: “Leadership has asked board members to not speak publicly at this time.”

What a cruddy way to build trust. And what an insulting way to emasculate volunteer board members.

On Friday, the museum announced Brumback was no longer chairwoman. She’d been replaced by Orlando attorney Mark Elliott, who had responded to questions I’d asked earlier in the week without actually answering most of them — including why Whitlock had resigned, who told the other trustees to keep quiet and why.

The museum doesn’t seem to understand you can’t move forward until you account for your past.

And the museum still hasn’t come clean about the biggest question — why it proceeded to put on an art show after the FBI started asking questions.

In Brumback’s piece, she said the feds alerted the museum about concerns (in the form of a grand jury subpoena) in July 2021. Yet a full seven months later, the museum opened the Basquiat exhibit as if nothing was amiss.

We don’t know if the full board knew about the FBI’s concerns and just decided to bulldoze ahead anyway, or whether board members were kept in the dark and are now dutifully following orders to keep quiet about who knew what when. Neither scenario inspires confidence.

Not in me. And not in people like Alan Ginsburg, one of Orlando’s most generous philanthropists who also served as a trustee on the museum’s board years ago.

When asked how he might’ve responded to news about the FBI if he were still on the board, Ginsburg said: “I would’ve said: Holy shucks, this is serious.” (Except he didn’t say “shucks.”)

Ginsburg went on to say: “You can’t just put your head in the sand and hope you sell lots of socks in the gift shop.”

Ginsburg didn’t offer his comments in spite. To the contrary, he just last year offered to help finance the Orlando museum’s recent expansion plans.

Ginsburg says he has always wanted the museum to be more than it has been. “In many communities, the museum is a hive for the community’s appetite for culture,” he said. “Orlando never rose to the occasion.”

So Ginsburg offered to help pay for a new downtown campus for the museum — one topped with a rooftop exhibit from world-renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly. The museum shared news of Ginsburg’s generosity with great optimism last fall. Less trumpeted was a follow-up story in the Sentinel last week saying the plans “fizzled.”

Again, things are obviously not OK.

The Sentinel’s arts and cultural writer, Matt Palm, has struggled to get museum leaders to answer questions — even about oddly basic things, like what the museum might like featured in the Sentinel’s Fall Arts season preview.

Instead, the museum has hired a crisis-communications firm that seems to have, so far, done little to stem the crisis.

Elliott said the museum now has 24 trustees, following a purge of members who’d stayed on the board too long.

The leaders still there should explain what went wrong and what they’re doing to make sure it won’t happen again.

Remember: One of the most damning parts of this whole mess was an FBI affidavit that said the museum’s since-fired director, Aaron De Groft, tried to silence an art expert who said she couldn’t verify that all of the paintings were real.

“You want us to put out there you got $60 grand to write this? Ok then. Shut up,” De Groft wrote, according to the affidavit. “You took the money. Stop being holier than thou. Be quiet now is my best advice.”

There seems to be a disturbing theme of Orlando museum leaders telling others to keep quiet.

I don’t believe any board members had nefarious intentions. I’m sure most had altruistic motives and simply wanted to help. But every nonprofit scandal I’ve ever covered — including at Central Florida’s old blood bank — had one thing in common: board members not offering enough scrutiny.

Sometime between when the FBI came calling and the Basquiat exhibit opened months later, it seems there was a lack of scrutiny and accountability. And there continues to be a lack of transparency.

Ginsburg wants the museum to succeed. So do I. But you can’t just wish away your problems anymore than you can wish a bogus piece of art into authenticity.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com