Second Soup Attack on Van Gogh Painting After Sentencing of Original Protesters by U.K. Climate Activists

Two Van Gogh Paintings had canned soup thrown at them by three activists at the "Lovers and Poets" exhibition at the National Gallery in London on February September 27. Photo: Just Stop Oil.

On September 27, 2024, three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022

In the latest incident the three activists entered the gallery at approximately 2:30 PM, targeting both "Sunflowers" (1888 and 1889) during a prominent exhibition showcasing Van Gogh's works. The paintings are part of a significant triptych, with the targeted 1888 piece being especially notable for its cultural value. One of the activists, Phil Green, declared to gallery visitors that future generations would view these recent imprisonments as a testament to the activists' fight for justice and environmental preservation.

Image of Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland

The sentencing of Plummer and Holland, who were found guilty of criminal damage after they caused an estimated £10,000 worth of damage to the gold frame of the "Sunflowers" painting. During their sentencing, Judge Christopher Hehir condemned their actions as arrogant, emphasizing the near irreversible damage that could have occurred had the soup penetrated the protective glass of the artwork. He highlighted that their actions warranted custodial sentences due to the severity of the potential harm, noting that the gallery staff had to immediately assess the painting for any severe damage.

The latest soup-throwing incident adds to a series of high-profile protests by climate activists, reflecting an increasing urgency within these movements. Many activists view such direct actions as necessary to raise awareness and provoke public discourse about the climate crisis and the perceived inaction of governments and corporations.

The National Gallery quickly confirmed that the paintings were unharmed, and they were removed for inspection but returned to display shortly after.

This ongoing confrontation between climate activism and legal repercussions illustrates the escalating tensions surrounding environmental issues in the U.K. as activists grapple with the implications of their protests in an increasingly polarized social and political landscape.

J.Larson

David John Voss sentenced for 5 years for the major art fraud case exploiting the famous Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau

David John Voss, 52, has been sentenced to five years in prison following his guilty plea to charges of forgery and uttering forged documents. The case, which is being described as Canada's largest art fraud investigation, involved a vast scheme to create and sell counterfeit artworks falsely attributed to the late Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.

The sentencing took place on Thursday, with Superior Court Justice Bonnie Warkentin emphasizing the profound damage inflicted on Morrisseau's legacy. The judge noted that the fraudulent activities not only aimed for economic gain but also irrevocably tarnished Morrisseau's cultural and spiritual contributions.

Image of Norval Morrisseau

Norval Morrisseau, an influential figure in Canadian art, was born in 1932 and hailed from the Ojibway Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek First Nation in northwestern Ontario. He is renowned for founding the Woodlands School of Art, a movement known for its vibrant and spiritual depictions of Indigenous life. Morrisseau's distinctive style features bold colors and intricate symbols rooted in Anishinaabe traditions and mythology. His work earned significant acclaim, with exhibitions held at major galleries across Canada, including Rideau Hall in Ottawa, and his pieces are celebrated for their deep cultural significance.

Morrisseau passed away in 2007 at the age of 75. His contributions to art and Indigenous culture have been recognized widely, cementing his status as one of Canada’s most revered artists. According to court proceedings, Voss orchestrated an elaborate fraud ring from 1996 to 2019. The operation involved an assembly-line process where Voss and his associates created thousands of fake Morrisseau paintings. Painters followed a 'paint by numbers' system to replicate the artist's style.

This evidence photo released by the Ontario Provincial Police in Canada shows a forgery of artwork by legendary Canadian Indigenous artist Norval Morrisseau. Photo by HANDOUT / Ontario Provincial Police /AFP via Getty Images

In March 2023, eight individuals were charged in connection with the fraud ring. Gary Lamont, considered the ringleader, was sentenced to five years in prison in December 2023. Other defendants include Diane Marie Champagne, Linda Joy Tkachyk, and Benjamin Paul Morrisseau from Thunder Bay, as well as Jeffrey Gordon Cowan, James White, and David P. Bremner from other locations. Charges against Champagne were withdrawn during Thursday’s proceedings.

A piece of Indigenous artwork on a table. One of more than 1,000 paintings seized by Ontario Provincial Police in connection with an art fraud investigation involving fake paintings attributed to Norval Morrisseau. (Ontario Provincial Police)

The fraud's impact on Morrisseau's estate has been severe, with Cory Dingle, the executive director, revealing that the estate faces estimated losses of at least $100 million. Dingle called for restitution and proposed legal reforms to prevent future occurrences. He also urged for continued assistance from those involved in identifying the fake artworks.

While the Crown did not pursue restitution due to the complexities involved, Dingle emphasized the need for changes to Canadian law to better address and remedy such frauds. This case highlights the broader implications of art fraud on cultural heritage and the challenges faced in combating such crimes.

- J.Larson

The Hunt: $200 Million Worth of Art Is Still Missing From a Paraguay Museum

Thieves dug a tunnel to steal European masterworks back in 2002.

A photograph of a majestic white art museum against blue skies, partially obscured by a palm frond National Museum of Fine Arts (Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes), Asuncion, Paraguay. Photo: MJ Photography / Alamy Stock Photo Vittoria Benzine July 15, 2024

In July 2002, a heist at the National Museum of Fine Arts of Asunción in Paraguay rocked the world, not only due to the lost masterworks, which were valued at around $200 million, but the elaborate ploy the thieves used to pull off their robbery. They favored European paintings, with a haul that included a self-portrait by Tintoretto, Tête de Femme by Adolphe Piolt, a landscape by Gustave Courbet, a Madonna and Child by Bartolomé Estéban Murillo, and an unattributed 16th-century portrait of Saint Jerome.

The museum was founded in 1909, 67 years after Paraguay officially declared its independence from the Spanish Empire. It occupies the same building as the National Archives, and holds 650 artworks ranging from paintings to ceramics, alongside antique coins and more from the collection of the inaugural director-general Juan Silvano Godoi.

The museum’s founding was meant to mark a new chapter for the republic, but centuries of political volatility could partially explain why the institution hadn’t managed to install any security cameras to capture the thieves on film.

Instead, a shocking, subterranean discovery told the story. Authorities found that an 80-feet tunnel had been dug to connect the museum with a health food store across the street.

Further investigation revealed that the men who’d opened that store had used fake identities. They had even carved out another leg of the tunnel that led to the parking lot of a hotel nearby, which the bandits likely used to escape.

A scan of a portion of a portrait painting of a coy young woman lit dramatically against a black background Adolphe Piot, Tete de Femme (date unknown). Photo: The History Collection / Alamy Stock Photo

Legend of the haul lives on and international police forces have scoured the black market ever since. Only one opportunity has presented itself so far. In 2008, the National Centre for Cultural Heritage Protection at the INTERPOL-Argentina Department received a tip that the lost “San Gerónimo” by an anonymous artist and valued at $200,000 was up for illicit sale in Posadas, Argentina.

Soon enough, a police fact-finding mission accompanied by Argentinean Federal forces recovered the painting in mint condition. The work was back home by that July, as part of a larger push by Argentinian authorities to repatriate stolen artwork found on their soil.

Those forces are probably still monitoring the art world’s underbelly for the remaining lost artworks. Meanwhile, the museum has taken matters into their own hands. In February, the institution commissioned five contemporary painters to recreate the lost artworks while 700 fascinated attendees watched on.

The resulting canvases went on view in an exhibition that opened on March 22, and is slated to stay up for awhile. Although the decision doesn’t make it seem like the museum has much hope the works will ever turn up, at least they’re capitalizing on the unexpected notoriety of hosting Paraguay’s one-time robbery of the century.

The Hunt explores art and ancient relics that are—alas!—lost to time. From the Ark of the Covenant to Cleopatra’s tomb, these legendary treasures have long captured the imaginations of historians and archaeologists, even if they remain buried under layers of sand, stone, and history.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/the-hunt-paraguay-museum-heist-2463477

Stolen Titian, Once Found at a London Bus Stop, Sells for a Record $22 Million

The work had also been looted by Napoleon in the 19th century.

Titian, Rest on the Flight into Egypt (ca. 1510). A religious painting from the Renaissance with the Holy Family traveling in the wilderness, Joseph sitting on the left and the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus in the center of the painting. A small house is seen in the distance.

A small Titian painting with a storied past has reset the auction record for the famed Renaissance artist. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (ca. 1508-10) sold for £17.6 million ($22.1 million), including fees, at Christie’s Old Masters sale in London on July 2. The Biblical scene, measuring just 18 by 25 inches, has passed through the hands of emperors, aristocrats, and archdukes, and was stolen—twice.

The work bore a presale estimate of £15 million to £25 million and was backed by a third-party guarantee. It sold to a phone bidder, likely its guarantor. According to the auction house, its “intimate” size is typical of Titian’s earlier works.

The artist’s previous record of $16.9 million was set in the 2011 sale of A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria at Sotheby’s New York.

“This result is a tribute to the impeccable provenance and quiet beauty of this sublime early masterpiece by Titian, which is one of the most poetic products of the artist’s youth,” said Orlando Rock, the chairman of Christie’s U.K. “This picture has captured the imaginations of audiences for more than half a millennia and will no doubt continue to do so.”

The Rest on the Flight into Egypt was first recorded in the collection of a Venetian merchant in the early 17th century before it was sold to Sir James Hamilton of Holyroodhouse and then on to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria. The Archduke esteemed his collection so highly that, in the mid 1600s, he commissioned a kunstkammer series of paintings to capture all of his trophy artworks. The Rest on the Flight into Egypt appears in one these paintings, which is now in the Prado in Madrid. After a few generations bouncing between Holy Roman Emperors, the work was first stolen when it was looted by French troops in 1809 during Napoleon’s occupation of Vienna. (It was returned in 1815.)

Its second theft was far more recent. In 1995, it was stolen from England’s Longleat, the home of the descendants of John Alexander Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath, who had acquired the work from the London dealer Colnaghi. The gallery for its part, had bought it in a Christie’s sale in 1878 for 350 guineas (around $46,700 today)—the most of any of the 11 works by Titian in the sale. After it was stolen, Thynne’s heirs called in an art detective, Charles Hill, to help find the painting, then valued at £5 million. It wasn’t until 2002, however, that the painting turned up, frameless and stuffed in a plastic bag, at a bus stop in London in exchange for a £100,000 reward.

It was returned to Longleat and has been there ever since, except for its appearance in the 2012 exhibition “Titian’s First Masterpiece: The Flight into Egypt” at the National Gallery, London.

After the sale, Lord Bath, who succeeded his father as the Marquess of Bath in 2020 and inherited the Longleat estate, said it was “fabulous” to see the interest in the painting. “As the next chapter in the Rest on the Flight into Egypt’s story is written, I am pleased with the outcome [of the sale]; which will support our considerable long-term investment strategy at Longleat to build on the vision and legacy of my ancestors for the benefit of future generations,” he said.

Margaret Carrigan, July 4, 2024 https://news.artnet.com/market/titian-sells-for-a-record-22-million-2507972

Want to Commit Art Fraud? An Expert Shares 5 Strategies

The art world has become inundated with tales of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous behavior. Here is how cons are orchestrated.

by Richard Polsky March 14, 2024

Over the last few years, the art world has become inundated with tales of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous behavior. Starting with the Knoedler scandal, and continuing with the Orlando Museum of Art debacle, a pattern of deceit has emerged. Since the art market is unregulated, it continues to attract individuals who don’t play by the rules—because, basically, there are none. Vigilance and common sense are the keys to staying out of trouble.

The remarkable thing about art fraud is that it can literally happen to anyone. As an art authenticator, I spend my days examining random works by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, and I continue to be amazed by the forged images and fabricated provenances that I see. Over time, I’ve witnessed reoccurring scams, allowing me to compile a list of ways to commit art fraud—if you really want to. Obviously, getting away with it is easier said than done. But the following five examples bear watching, lest you get taken in by the deceptions that lie below the surface.

Digital collage by Elvin Tavarez for artnet


1. If at First You Can’t Sell a Fake, Try, Try Again Of the seven artists I authenticate, Jackson Pollock is the most complicated. One of the reasons why is because his forgeries often come from highly improbable sources that are impossible to trace. Just during the last two years alone, I’ve learned of an alleged major “drip” painting that was discovered in Bulgaria (of all places) and another that supposedly belonged to Fidel Castro (of all people). Needless to say, neither one of these paintings turned out to be authentic.

What’s really troubling is the surprising number of “Pollock” canvases which I’ve examined, and deemed inauthentic, that then repeatedly pop up on the market like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Usually, there’s a six-month lag until the same picture shows up again. When it does reemerge, it often winds up on eBay. The seller offers platitudes about its glorious history, its extraordinary investment potential, and their rigorous vetting of the piece. Unfortunately, they conveniently leave out the “minor detail” that it was previously rejected as a fake.

An act of fraud is only committed when you sell a counterfeit painting. Up until then, you can do whatever you want with a fake picture. But if you know it’s fake beforehand, and money changes hands, then you’ve crossed over into felonious territory. The owners of these bogus Jackson Pollocks all know the truth about what they’re selling, which means they’re 100 percent liable. Proving their chicanery is the tough part. Far better to avoid getting entangled in these recycled purchases.


2. Sell a Painting Allegedly Found in a Storage Locker Dealing with a “made-up” provenance is an occupational hazard for an art authenticator. Some of the backstories that accompany fake Jean-Michel Basquiats are outrageous. I often hear about paintings and drawings that were part of a trade between the original owner and Jean-Michel for drugs. Inevitably, no one can produce the name of the drug dealer. Or I’m told that the pusher died years ago. This makes it impossible to verify the story—which is exactly what the owner wants. It’s probably true that early in Basquiat’s career he occasionally swapped his art for narcotics. But good luck proving that a particular work can be traced to a specific individual.

A more common strategy for a con artist is to claim that a painting was found in an abandoned storage locker. Everyone has heard of storage lockers whose contents were sold for non-payment. There are professional pickers who cobble together a living buying and selling recovered items from these containers. On rare occasion they score a valuable find; perhaps a piece of antique furniture or a motorcycle. However, I’ve never heard of a painting by a major artist turning up this way. It simply doesn’t work like that. Anyone who collects art is aware of how valuable Basquiat’s work has become. If you were fortunate enough to own one of his canvases, you would never keep it in a storage unit.


3. Sell an Overly Restored Work as an Original Everyone is familiar with the notorious Salvator Mundi painting. To this day, no one has been able to figure out whether it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, by his assistants (with an assist from the master), or by a completely different artist. The point is that Christie’s sold it as a Leonardo—and obviously the buyer believed this attribution. But what happens if, at a later date, someone uncovers irrefutable evidence that it’s not a Leonardo? Was fraud then committed? The answer is “no,” as long as Christie’s was fully convinced that it was real (and could provide strong evidence to back up its opinion).

This leads to another question: At what point does a work of art cross over from being executed by a specific artist, to being altered so heavily that it’s no longer his work? For example, I knew of a Joseph Cornell box where the wooden shell was fabricated by Cornell, a few of the interior objects were selected by him, and the verso of the box bore Cornell’s signature. Yet, this was clearly an unfinished assemblage. From what I understood, the piece was later restored by someone knowledgeable in Cornell’s work. But the conservator clearly got carried away; the box now contained an overabundance of ephemeral objects and came off as too slick. If you’re going to commit art fraud by completing an unfinished work, make sure you exercise restraint.

The recent story about A.I. being used to complete one of Keith Haring’s last paintings is an example of a painting (which in my opinion) could no longer be considered a Haring for two reasons. One, the validity of an A.I.-generated work has not been established. And two, authentication always comes down to the artist’s intent. Keith Haring’s intention was to leave the painting in its incomplete state—it was meant as a comment on the AIDS epidemic.


4. Whitewash a Painting Speaking of the Salvator Mundi, one of the more provocative stories to emerge from the controversy was the owner’s blatant attempt to validate his acquisition. The owner, said to be Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, approached the Louvre with an offer to lend his painting. At first, the Louvre’s curators proffered interest. If nothing else, it would have led to a surge in admissions. But the deal fell apart once MBS’s representatives demanded the painting be hung directly across from the Mona Lisa. The unambiguous message would have been that the Salvator Mundi is a Leonardo masterpiece just like the Mona Lisa.

This sort of thing has been going on for years. The quickest way to confer authenticity on a painting is “guilt by association.” If you own a picture where all signs point to it being genuine—but you can’t prove it—your best approach is to find a way to align it with an institution. It doesn’t have to be MoMA or the Met (though that would be good); any legitimate public or university museum will do. By hanging your painting, the institution is conferring authenticity. This is how the Orlando Museum of Art got into trouble with its show of questionable Basquiats. Bear in mind this is not committing fraud. It’s only fraud if the lender and/or the institution have suspicions about a painting’s validity (and the owner’s intention to sell it).


5. When It Comes to Documentation, Less Is More Scammers go out of their way to create elaborate paperwork. Their logic is that the greater the paperwork, the more likely the painting will pass muster as authentic. Wrong. All this does is create obfuscation. Over time, I’ve been privy to some impressive paperwork, including documents that include so many gold seals and elaborate rubber stamps that they become works of art in their own right.

If you want to commit fraud, one way to do so is by forging an art authentication committee certificate. In recent years, this has become a growth industry. The Andy Warhol market is rife with fake certificates of authenticity from the now-defunct Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. There have also been a blizzard of fake Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat certificates of authenticity, complete with counterfeit Julia Gruen and Gerard Basquiat signatures, respectively.

The trick for a con man is to master the subtleties and nuances of these certificates—which, so, far no one has been able to do. Forgers repeatedly make the same mistakes. They would be well-advised to watch Frank Abagnale, the slippery character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can and learn how to get it right.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/want-to-commit-art-fraud-an-expert-shares-5-strategies-2428909

Investigators say Chicago's Art Institute is holding onto 'Looted Art'

The Art Institute of Chicago. Ando Gallery. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
by Tom Mashberg and Graham Bowley

NEW YORK, NY.- New York investigators trying to seize a drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago filed an exacting 160-page motion Friday accusing the museum of blatantly ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been looted by the Nazis on the eve of World War II.

While the court papers, filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, did not accuse the museum of being party to the fraud, they said it had applied “willful blindness” to what the investigators said were clear indications that it was acquiring stolen property.

The drawing, “Russian War Prisoner,” by Egon Schiele, was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966. It is one of a number of works by Schiele that ended up in the hands of museums and collectors and have been sought by the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. The institute paid about $5,500 for the drawing, which has been valued by investigators today at $1.25 million.

In a statement, the Art Institute said it had good title to the work by Schiele, an Austrian expressionist, and would fight the district attorney’s attempt to seize it.

“We have done extensive research on the provenance history of this work and are confident in our lawful ownership of the piece,” the museum said, adding: “If we had this work unlawfully, we would return it, but that is not the case here.”

But the investigators said in their court filing that the institute’s “failure” to vet the work properly “undercuts any arguments that AIC were truly good-faith purchasers.”

Much of what was presented in the investigators’ voluminous filing had been cited in civil court cases pursued in recent years by the Grünbaum heirs. The current detailed presentation — which included more than 100 exhibits designed to trace the path of the artwork from the hands of Grünbaum to the Nazis to the museum — was aimed at pressuring the institute to follow the lead of seven other museums and collectors who have recently turned over Schiele works once owned by Grünbaum to the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

The Art Institute has argued that the federal courts have already ruled in the matter, deciding that the heirs had come forward too late to lay claim to the work and that there was reason to believe the works were all inherited by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, who passed them on to a Swiss dealer in the 1950s.

The New York investigators took aim at that account in their motion, devoting page after page to evidence that they said showed the provenance documents brought forward by the dealer, Eberhard Kornfeld, to prove his account, contained forged signatures or were altered long after he came into possession of the Schieles in the mid-1950s.

“There is one person in this case who doctored” documents, “and always did so in pencil — Eberhard Kornfeld,” Matthew Bogdanos, chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, said in the court filing.

The investigators contend that, while it is not possible to absolutely determine how Kornfeld secured the Grünbaum art, it was most likely provided to him by other art dealers known to have relations with the Nazis. The court filing includes inventory records that prosecutors said establish that the works were in the possession of a Nazi-controlled storehouse in Austria in 1938 after Grünbaum was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he was killed in 1941.

The filing also cites documents to show that the sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, had already fled the country when the “Prisoner” drawing, and others later obtained by Kornfeld, were in the Vienna storage facility. As a result, the investigators said, the works could not have been sold by her to Kornfeld.

In arguing it holds good title to the work, the Art Institute has relied on two federal court rulings. In one, rendered in 2011 involving another Schiele work once owned by Grünbaum, the judge described Kornfeld’s account as credible, and added that, regardless, the heirs were not timely in bringing a claim.

In a second case brought by the heirs and decided in November, a federal court in New York, citing the earlier federal case, awarded the Art Institute ownership of “Prisoner” because it, too, ruled that the Grünbaum heirs had waited too long to make a claim for the drawing.

A lawyer for the heirs, Raymond Dowd, said he had filed to ask the judge to reconsider the decision in this case and to allow him to file an amended complaint.

“The Art Institute of Chicago recently prevailed in civil litigation in federal court regarding Egon Schiele’s ‘Russian War Prisoner,’ successfully demonstrating that the claimants’ suit lacked merit,” the institute said in its statement.

“Federal court,” the statement said, “has explicitly ruled that the Grünbaums’ Schiele art collection was ‘not looted’ and ‘remained in the Grünbaum family’s possession’ and was sold by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law Mathilde Lukacs in 1956.”

The institute’s decision to continue to fight the efforts by Manhattan prosecutors to retrieve its Schiele work makes it a lone holdout among the museums and collectors who received warrants from investigators telling them they possessed stolen property.

Among those returning Grünbaum works in September were the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, both in New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California; Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and a longtime advocate of Holocaust restitution; and the estate of Serge Sabarsky, a well-known art collector.

Since then, two other institutions — the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College — agreed to surrender artworks once owned by Grünbaum.

One of the confusing aspects of the dispute is that a state court in New York has ruled in a completely opposite way and found that the Grünbaum Schieles were indeed looted.

While decisions in federal court have held that the Grünbaum heirs waited too long to start reclaiming the works, the 2018 New York state Supreme Court ruling found that Grünbaum had never sold or surrendered any of his works before his death, and that they were looted by the Nazis, making his heirs their true owners.

The ruling relied on the terms of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, a U.S. law that seeks to ensure that “claims to artwork and other property stolen or misappropriated by the Nazis are not unfairly barred by statutes of limitations.”

Investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office became involved after the New York state court ruling. Prosecutors have said they have jurisdiction because some of the Grünbaum works passed from Kornfeld to a Manhattan dealer, Otto Kallir.

The Schiele works, including the “Prisoner” drawing, were sold by Kallir to a variety of buyers, and the drawing ultimately ended up at the Art Institute.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.https://artdaily.cc/news/166994/Investigators-say-Chicago-s-Art-Institute-is-holding-onto--Looted-Art-

Fraud experts, Norval Morrisseau estate say long journey to weed out fakes remains - Art fraud ring members sentenced to 5 years on fraud charges

Gary Lamont parties with distributor Ugo Matulic

One of eight people charged in what Ontario Provincial Police say is the largest art fraud investigation in Canadian history has been sentenced to five years incarceration, with credit for one year of time already served.

Gary Lamont pleaded guilty on Dec. 4 to a charge of making false documents, mainly artwork, that was attributed to Morrisseau and a count of defrauding the public in an amount exceeding $5,000.

Lamont oversaw the production and distribution of hundreds of forged artworks falsely attributed to Morrisseau starting in 2002, according to the agreed statement of facts submitted to the courts. According to the statement of facts, 190 "Lamont Ring Forgeries" have been identified to date, with 117 of them seized by investigators.

"To have one of the key figures that we've been interested in admit to his guilt in terms of creating fake Morrisseaus, that's a huge step forward," said Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer who specializes in art forgery.

Sommer represented Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn in a lawsuit against a Toronto art dealer for allegedly selling him a fake Morrisseau painting. The Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Hearn and awarded him $60,000 in damages. It used to be very difficult to convince police and courts to take art fraud seriously, said Sommer.

"They treat it almost like an amusing spectacle, you know, a tale of charming rogues that defraud people who have more money than they know what to do with," he said. "There's a lot of really ugly criminality that's connected with this art fraud, Sommer said." Sommer estimates there are significantly more fraudulent works in circulation than genuine Morrisseau paintings. "It severely muddied his legacy," he said. "They undermine the relationship between viewers of the art and who Morrisseau really was."

Police laid more than 40 charges against eight people this past March after a years-long investigation into the forgery of the famous Anishinaabe artist's work. The investigation led to the seizure of more than 1,000 pieces of forged Morrisseau artwork

"There is likely at least another 5,000 fraudulent artworks out there, " said Cory Dingle, executive director of Norval Morrisseau's estate. "The real battle hasn't even started." Morrisseau's estate faces an expensive and fraught task — finding, investigating and denouncing the thousands of fake works to preserve Morrisseau's authentic legacy.

Norval Morrisseau as artist-in-residence in the Thomson Shack at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg, Ont., on July 11, 1979. (Ian Samson/McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives) The sheer volume of fakes to identify combined with the difficulty of legally proving them as inauthentic is an undue burden for the estate to bear, said Dingle.

"Canada really needs to have a federal arts-fraud division, because truly we are talking about our culture and our heritage that is being defrauded," he said. Some other countries allow police to work with artist's estates to identify and destroy fake paintings, said Dingle. "That's how they clean up their market. Right now, Canada has no mechanism such as that."

Diane Marie Champagne, Benjamin Paul Morrisseau, Linda Joy Tkachyk and David John Voss will be in court in Thunder Bay. Also charged are Jeffrey Gordon Cowan of Niagara-on-the-Lake, James (Jim) White of Essa Township and David P. Bremner of Locust Hill. They will be appearing in Barrie for pre-trial.

A legacy diminished, but not destroyed
As the founder of Woodlands style art, Morrisseau's influence is so pervasive that the impact of the fraud reverberates throughout the Indigenous art scene, said art gallery owner Sophia Lebessis, who is Inuk.

"You're filled with rage and disappointment on a cultural level because it's like, here's another aspect of our lives that are just taken over and destroyed," said Lebessis, who owns Transformation Fine Art, a Calgary-based gallery of Inuit and First Nations art.

While fraudsters have damaged Morrisseau's legacy, Lebessis said they can't take away the positive impact his art has on the people who view it.

"What these criminals are not going to take away from us is that magical moment when you're walking into a gallery or you're walking into a museum and you're seeing a Morrisseau for your very first time," said Lebessis,

"That feeling that you felt, and all of a sudden your worldview changes, of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people. All of a sudden you're connected to this master artist who you might never have met."

Michelle Allan · CBC News https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/norval-morrisseau-art-fraud-sentencing-1.7059535