The wide brush of an Indigenous Canadian art fraud case has not painted Barrie’s MacLaren Art Centre.
Officials at the downtown gallery have said there’s no reason to believe the 47 Norval Morrisseau works in the MacLaren’s collection are not authentic, as they are serigraphs on paper or silk screen prints — not the acrylic on canvas paintings linked to an allegedly fraudulent art ring accused of making and selling fake paintings by Morrisseau, a renowned Ontario Indigenous artist.
Matthew Follwell, the MacLaren’s president and chair of its board of directors, said the gallery hasn’t had its Morrisseau serigraphs authenticated by an expert, but there’s no reason to believe they aren’t the real deal.
“No, none,” Follwell said, adding the MacLaren isn’t connected to the art fraud case.
“No, I think we’re pretty free of any kind of conflict that way, to tell you the truth,” he told BarrieToday. “It’s obviously concerning. The acrylic on canvas paintings were the main issue of the case, I believe, and we don’t have anything like that in our collection.”
Follwell provided BarrieToday with a file detailing the MacLaren’s Morrisseau collection — with ID numbers, titles, maker (Morrisseau), materials, measurements and dates made, which ranged from 1977 to 1980, although some of the works are undated.
“They came into the collection in the mid-1990s — a couple of times in ’94 and ’96, a single one came in 2016. The majority of them are not framed — they’re works on paper, so they’re in a portfolio in our prints and drawings room, and some downstairs in our storage,” said Follwell.
“I think they were donations. If I had to guess, they were not purchased by the MacLaren; they would have been donations from community members.”
The MacLaren, located at Mulcaster and Collier streets, had an exhibition of serigraphs from the gallery’s collection by Morrisseau, also known as Copper Thunderbird, from Nov. 28, 2015, to Feb. 28, 2016.
In early 2023, Ontario Provincial Police and the Thunder Bay Police Service announced they had busted an art ring they allege is responsible for an “apparent decades-long art fraud” that resulted in the manufacture and distribution of more than 1,000 paintings being passed off as Morrisseau’s work.
Police seized alleged fraudulent paintings, prints and other artwork, saying some of the paintings sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
A Thunder Bay man has already pleaded guilty to one count of forgery and one count of defrauding the public above $5,000, while six others remain before the courts.
Also known as Copper Thunderbird, Morrisseau was the founder of the Woodlands School of Canadian Art and is often considered the grandfather of contemporary Indigenous art in Canada.
His work was characterized by thick black outlines and bright colours, but prior to his 2007 death, Morrisseau expressed concerns about others painting and selling art in his name.
In 2005, he had established the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society, designed to compile a database of his paintings with the intent of discrediting forgeries.
A 2020 documentary, There Are No Fakes, focuses on concerns about Morrisseau forgeries.
OPP and Thunder Bay police announced an investigation into the allegations launched in 2020 called Project Totton. Eight people were arrested — five in Thunder Bay and three others who are being prosecuted in Barrie.
Five people were accused in Thunder Bay: David John Voss, 51, Diane Marie Champagne, 63, Gary Bruce Lamont, 61, Linda Joy Tkachyk, 59, and Benjamin Paul Morrisseau, 53, the artist’s nephew.
Lamont pleaded guilty in December to one count of forgery and one count of defrauding the public above $5,000. He has been sentenced to five years minus pre-sentence custody of one year. As part of the Lamont plea, all charges against Tkachyk were withdrawn.
Ontario Superior Court heard in the agreed statement of facts in Lamont’s case that between 2002 and 2019, he oversaw the production of numerous Morrisseau forgeries, which were then sold to mostly intermediaries before being sold to private collectors and galleries.
This particular forgery ring, headed by Lamont and operated in Thunder Bay, is believed to have produced 190 fakes, 117 of which have been seized by police.
Lamont’s sentence will be served concurrently with a two-year sentence he is already serving after pleading guilty to sexual assault charges, also last December.
The Crown did not seek a restitution order for the costs of the forged works, arguing there was no real possibility Lamont could or would pay such restitution.
Victims can still seek restitution through civil action.
All seized artworks are to be forfeited, though a separate forfeiture hearing will be scheduled for those who wish to retain ownership.
Also charged are James White, 81, of Essa Township, David Bremner, 75, of the Markham area, and Jeffrey Cowan, 47, of Niagara-on-the-Lake. Pre-trial is scheduled to continue March 27.
The MacLaren’s 2015-16 exhibition said Morrisseau is a renowned Indigenous Canadian artist who developed the distinctive pictographic painting style known as the Woodlands School. His work represents spiritual forces and aspects of Anishinaabe culture including shamanism, animism, tensions between Aboriginal cultures and Christianity and the interconnection between all living things.
Featuring Morrisseau’s characteristic thick black contours and bold colours, this selection of serigraphs from the MacLaren’s collection highlights the mythology and symbolism of animals in Morrisseau’s oeuvre.
The exhibition said Morrisseau was born in 1931 on the Sand Point First Nation reserve, near Thunder Bay. A highly influential artist, his work has been collected by numerous major institutions including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Royal Ontario Museum, the MacLaren Art Centre and the National Gallery of Canada, where he had a major retrospective in 2005 and 2006.
Morrisseau was named a Member of the Order of Canada and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
He died in 2007 in Toronto.
While the Morrisseau art fraud case excludes the MacLaren, the Barrie gallery has not always escaped such controversy.
In 2000, a deal to acquire more than 500 Auguste Rodin bronzes and some sculptures — involving registered charity Ideas Canada Foundation — was hatched.
A display of the Rodins was considered to be a significant achievement for the MacLaren, and there were also hopes it could be a major revenue generator for the art centre.
But the deal fell apart because those donating the money to buy the Rodins were denied tax breaks by Revenue Canada.
There was also some question about the quality of the Rodin bronzes and sculptures.
This controversy led to major financial hardship for the MacLaren, which was moving from its Toronto Street facility to the revamped Carnegie building on Mulcaster Street, where its annual operating budget would increase to $3 million from $500,000.
In 2006, the city threw the MacLaren a financial lifeline, assuming the annual operating costs of the building. This was approximately $200,000 to $225,000 a year.
City funding for the MacLaren Art Centre in this year’s Barrie operating budget is $165,000, the same level as 2023, and is used to support the MacLaren’s operating costs, said Craig Millar, city treasurer and chief financial officer.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a French sculptor, illustrator, graphic artist and painter; he is considered to be the founder of impressionist style in the art of sculpture.
The bronze reproduction of The Thinker, which sat for so long in front of the MacLaren, is part of the collection of Rodin replicas linked to the art centre’s controversial past. So was Eve, another Rodin, which sat in Barrie City Hall. Both were removed in 2017.
— With files from TBNewsWatch.com
