Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau was unique in the history of Canadian art. His work brought First Nations culture to the art world for decades. Morrisseau produced a lot of paintings between his first exhibition in 1962 and his death in 2007, but not nearly as many as are on the market. As far back as 1991, he complained about the proliferation of fake Morrisseau paintings, but little was done about it. Morrisseau paintings were sold for thousands of dollars, but many of them were painted by someone else, and dealers, museums, auction houses, and art collectors didn't seem to care.
In 2005, Kevin Hearn of the band Barenaked Ladies bought a Morrisseau painting for $20,000 from a Toronto gallery who assured him it was genuine. Five years later, he learned it was fake. A lot of digging led him to two men in Thunder Bay, Ontario, who had tenuous connections to Morrisseau, and were said to produce and sell the fakes. Hearn sued them, but the judge could not be certain whether Hearn's painting was a fake or genuine. Still, Hearn's years of research on the case continued, leading to a documentary about the fakes, which interested a Thunder Bay law enforcement officer named Jason Rybak.
The combined efforts of Rybak, Hearn, and documentary producer Jamie Kastner uncovered an art fraud ring that flooded the market with at least 10,000 fake Morrisseau paintings that pulled in over $10 million. Read the story of the massive art fraud and the massive investigation at Smithsonian.
(Image credit: daryl_mitchell)