Fake Norval Morrisseau painting is uncovered at The Winnipeg Art Gallery

It’s being touted as one of Canada’s largest art frauds uncovered in Ontario, involving many fake Norval Morrisseau paintings, and now questions are being raised about how one of the fake paintings ended up here at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. 

The fake artwork, called Astral Plain Scouts was bought by a private collector in Thunder Bay Ontario, before being donated to the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2000.

The piece was last displayed in 2013 and is now in storage, with Head of Collections and Exhibitions for the Gallery, Riva Symko saying they were notified by police on Friday confirming the piece to be a fraud following a thorough investigation.

“For us it was the signature on the back of the painting that was suspect, it was something that was identified as suspect in a number of paintings, but there are other indicators as well, which now the lead investigator is an expert on identifying actually,” said Riva Symko, the head of collections and exhibitions with WAG.

Morrisseau, who passed in 2007 at the age of seventy-five, was a renowned First Nation artist, known as the founder of the Woodland School of Art, with his work being exhibited in galleries across Canada and with an art fraud case of this size, Symko says more pieces are being investigated across Canada.

“It’s my understanding that other galleries are definitely looking at their Morisseau closely it’s already a larger conversation across institutions,” said Symko.

As for the many other Morrisseau pieces owned by the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Symko says they are not under investigation

“We have about 11 pieces in our collection, it was just the one that was suspect, the others were fairly confident with several actually coming directly from Morrisseau, so were more confident on the authenticity of those pieces.”

The man who orchestrated the plan to create fraudulent Morrisseau pieces pleaded guilty in an Ontario court earlier this month, to his role in operating a fraud ring out of Thunder Bay between 1996 and 2019, and as for the piece titled Astral Plain Scouts, the gallery says they are still working out what to do with it.