17 January 2024 – Both at the Vancouver Art Gallery, fortunately not in the same exhibit.

Even so, each affected us in much the same way. We emerged stimulated, better informed, and hopeful about the kind of future trends that each show seems to suggest. What a happy way to spend a cold afternoon early in the new year!

— First up, the fibres —

Rooted Here: Woven From the Land

As the VAG website description explains, “This exhibition makes clear the vital integration of weaving throughout traditional and contemporary Salish cultures…” It features the work of four renowned Coast Salish artists (Angela George, Chief Janice George, Willard (Buddy) Joseph and Debra Sparrow) and includes both hangings…

with explanations…

and an installation of videos and draped mannequins.

Beautiful work, enriched by trends — trends that are now carrying the “integration” cited by that VAG intro beyond the Coast Salish peoples and bringing it into the larger context shared by us all.

In 2018, Debra Sparrow, Angela George and Willard (Buddy) George began collaborating with the Vancouver Mural Festival in a continuing project called Blanketing the City. , — a project through which they are bringing these design motifs into the city’s found architecture.

Now all four artists have moved beyond existing street structures to bespoke design for a $400-million new build. In collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, they have designed the copper cladding…

for the future home of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Some project material is included in the exhibit; I came home and promptly looked for more, especially in the detailed presentation on the architects’ own project design pages.

— And now for the fraud —

J.E.H. MacDonald? A Tangled Garden

Do please pay attention to that question mark.

We have here an entire exhibition, a detailed exhibition, devoted to ten sketches that were received with triumph in 2015 and are now acknowledged to be forgeries. That is to say:

• Not ten sketches, by Group of Seven co-founder J.E.H. MacDonald, for a subsequent oil painting in each case.

• Instead, ten sketches by Anonymous, after an authenticated oil painting in each case.

As with the exhibition’s question mark, so with its careful use of prepositions.

What an extraordinary show! A whole show built around a major institution saying, “We got that wrong. What looked right, was wrong.” And then documenting the almost nine years of investigation that produced the final verdict.

Appropriately, the lead image for this entangled story is the sketch after (not for!) MacDonald’s painting, The Tangled Garden.

What they’re still not telling us is whether the Toronto dealer and the Toronto art collectors who offered these works were themselves duped or part of the duplicity. What we do know is that very soon after the VAG trumpeted its exciting acquisition, the larger art community began to ask questions.

As best I understand it, the VAG initially responded in the well-established global tradition for handling such moments. It stone-walled.

But then, with a new CEO and the courageous example of Ian Thom (the then-Senior Curator who had brought in the acquisition), the VAG decided instead to conduct a thorough investigation, and share what they learned. Art historians, art experts at other institutions (e.g. National Gallery of Canada) and forensic scientists (e.g. the Canadian Conservation Institute of the federal Dept. of Canadian Heritage) all took part. As Ian Thom said, in the excellent video documenting all this work, “I thought this one of the great experiences of my life. Then it just got worse and worse.”

But for us out here, it just got better and better. A major institution, willing to acknowledge it had been conned? Willing to do the investigation, and then not quietly shelve it, and deep-six the works, but build an entire exhibition around those discoveries? Willing to acknowledge that fraud is as much part of the art scene as art itself? Willing to reveal its own stories, and educate the rest of us?

How wonderful it would be, if this trend caught on.

Come see the show, if you can manage to be in Vancouver any time before May 12. It includes some of the well-authenticated Group of Seven works in the VAG collection, but hits stride once it zeroes in on the investigation: the people, the skills, the tenacity, that led to the final results.

And if you can’t make it to town, dive into this story of art + forensics in various sources online: everybody from Stir to The Art Newspaper, to Galleries West, to the VAG itself. And more.