Front Burner - The true story behind the Norval Morrisseau art fraud

Episode Date: December 25, 2025

Forged is a six-part series from CBC in Canada and ABC Australia. Host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what's believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world.In this first episode, rock star Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is doing rock star things — like buying paintings. And what better painting for an iconic Canadian rocker to buy than one by Norval Morrisseau, one of the most iconic Indigenous artists in Canada? But when Kevin’s Morrisseau painting is featured in an exhibit, it gets taken down because the head curator says it’s “questionable.” Kevin tries to get some answers but every answer leads to more questions. Host Adrian Stimson traces Kevin’s dogged quest to find out the truth about his painting — and learns how this one painting is the key to cracking a whole underworld open. More episodes of Forged are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/ForgedxFB

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over-delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast. Hey everybody, Jamie here. Over the holidays, we'll be sharing some episodes from other podcast series that we think that you are really going to like. Up first is Forged, a brand new six-part podcast series from CBC and ABC in Australia. Host and indigenous artists from the Six Seagun Nation, Adrian Stimson, explores how the legacy of one of the world's most famous indigenous artists got tied up in the largest art fraud in the world. Norval Moro, often called the Picasso of the North,

has had his work forged thousands of times. In this first episode, Adrian Trace's one rock star's quest to find out the truth about his own Norval Moro painting and learns how this one painting became crucial to cracking a whole underworld open. Have a listen. We burn this sort of to prepare our minds. This grass is used for a sacred purpose

And that purpose is to clear away the aberrations of the mind To allow space to enter So that spirit will be speaking true That's the voice of Norval Morozo Smudging at Ceremony Just up, sirs? Somehow, Norval led me here Inspector Ryback?

Yes, nice to meet you, Adriene Stipson. Hi. I'm sitting in a police station in Thunder Bay. There's snow lining the parking lot outside the window. And inside, across from me, is Inspector Jason Ryback. I'm not usually in police stations, talking to cops. I'm an artist, a painter. But I've got a lot of questions these days.

When you started this investigation, how familiar were you with Norval's art? Well, when I started, I didn't even know who Norval. Norval was other than by name. I knew he was an painter from the area. I couldn't have even picked out a Norval-Morsal painting in an art gallery unless someone told me it was a Norval Moro. When we started, the hope was we were going to get information to help us solve the murderer Scott Dove. But we started getting all this information on an art fraud that happened. And I was like, how has nobody ever looked into this? My name is Adrian Stimson. I'm a member of the

Zika Nation. And I know the work of Norval Moro. As an indigenous artist, I've never known the art world without him. In Canada, he's called the grandfather of indigenous art. I see his work everywhere, in galleries, in flea markets, in kitschy gift shops. But when I see his art now, I see something else. Fakes. We believe it's the world's biggest art fraud. There's nothing that even comes close to the magnitude of the sure number of paintings that were created. You're already up into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and there's nothing that's even remotely close to that that's ever happened in the world. Thousands of fakes and a cold case murder.

The person who potentially is a suspect in this homicide is also involved in this art fraud, and it's like, are the two connected? And then I just started looking, and kind of the floodgates open, right? This is why I'm here. I keep trying to figure out, where is Norval in all of this? The truth seemed to be screaming right at us. Very quickly, it became clear that there were more and more fakes. I remember I just giving him shit.

I want my paint back. I know you killed that boy. I realized no one on the other side cared about the truth. It was more they were trying to stop me for. improving it. Any man who is attached to the senses and pleasures of this world is just like a man who's being devoured by serpents. I say bullshit.

From CBC in Canada and ABC in Australia, this is Forged. Episode 1. A Painting. Let me paint you a picture. It's a fall day in 1962 at a small gallery on Elizabeth Street in Toronto's Greenwich Village. So at that time, Elizabeth Street was the center of an alternative scene, and Jack Pollock had his gallery in that area. are in dresses, men are in suits. They're smoking as they walk around the cramped space, looking at the paintings on the walls. It's great painting and definitely spectacular. Intense. Colors are intense. Lines almost like stained glass windows. You know, a stained glass window

has intense color, and then all the colors are separated by lines. I don't want to paint it as being strange or exotic. It was great art, period. it. This is Gail Dexter Lord. She went on to be an art critic for the Toronto star, but back in 1962, she was a teen. But, you know, we're looking at these paintings and my mom likes them, my dad likes them, I like them. That's unusual, right? Obviously, you're a teenager. You don't always like what your parents like. The paintings on the walls are so vibrant, so full of energy, vitality, and movement. Crisp, bold, black lines, contouring these minimalist, almost abstract creatures, birds and snakes and bears and symbols, in reds and blues

and yellows and white. And this art lining the walls, it was painted by an indigenous artist. This wasn't the norm at the time. My parents were always very interested in art, and we would go to museums on the weekend, and they'd go to the Art Gallery of Ontario on the weekend. And I think that indigenous people were always presented as dead, not as living people. The artist in this gallery is very much alive. There's a real buzz about this show, a kind of spectacle, the novelty of the quote-unquote Indian in the gallery. I remember everyone's wearing a coat, which is memorable because when Norval-Moroso appears, and he's extremely tall, and he was wearing.

wearing a, you know, like a buckskin jacket with fringes on it, as I remember. And so outstrowed, and you have to say strode, this incredible, tall man. I mean, just really filled the room, let's put it that way. And we were introduced, we shook hands, we chatted, we talked about the art. I don't really remember what we said. It was a very brief encounter, but it was very impressive. And when you grow up with these ideas of a dead culture, that really was impressive. This exhibit was a pivotal moment for indigenous artists.

It got national attention, and it sold out immediately. One of the things that we were wondering about is how you were feeling when the gallery show opened. The people came in and looked at your painting. And it felt nothing. Nothing. Did you feel strange about it? Marlon, in a way, I was a little strange. I've been watching this archival tape from the example.

exhibit opening. Norval's being interviewed in the same gallery where he met young Gail, talking with a CBC journalist named June Calwood. The tape is black and white, and the camera zooms right in on Norval's face, so close that I can see a bit of stubble on his chin. And so what happened to you here in the city? The success seemed to you like part of what was promised. This week, I understand you made $4,000. What are you going to do with that? I don't know. What have you wanted?

What I wanted was people to know this art. This is all I ever wanted. It's a bit hard to hear Novel in this tape. He seems almost shy. But what he's saying is big. He says, What I wanted was for people to know this art. This is all I ever wanted.

And now people do know him, know his art. But before this exhibit, Norval was knocking on doors trying to sell his paintings in the remote town he lived in, in northern Ontario. He sold his work to tourists at the general store. He searched for supplies at the dump next to the shack he lived in, salvaged Christmas crepe paper, and wet it to get the colors.

for his paints. And then Jack Pollock, the owner of that gallery, heard about Norval. He was floored when he saw his paintings, and he arranged that exhibit for Norval at his gallery in Toronto. Remember his name. It's Norval Moriso,

a 31-year-older Djibway painter whose works were publicly displayed for the first time last week. The Toronto art world responded warmly to the showing, held at a small gallery in the city's Greenwich Village. The collectors had heard the new name and came in droves to see and buy his art.

They liked what they saw and snapped up all of his 35 pictures for a total of $4,000. Overnight, Norval Moriso, the shy, mystical artist, had found the acceptance he always knew would be his. But nothing is so simple. After the show, Norval and Jack Pollock, the gallerist and some others, went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Jack wrote about it in his memoir. He wrote, Later that evening, with red sole stickers on every painting, a drunken rage unleashed the pent-up hostility so fiercely held in check throughout the earlier hours. The white man did not deserve his paintings. Many of Novell's elders, elders he greatly respected, did not want him

sharing his work. Norval was painting sacred symbols, stories, visions, things that weren't shared much outside his Ojibwe community, let alone sold at an art gallery in Toronto. Am I doing the right thing for my people by portraying these things? This was a table I was breaking to go ahead and paint the concepts of my people, the religious aspects of my people. It was a continuous struggle, a very, very, very deep struggle within myself. That show at Pollock's Gallery changed the course of Norval's life. He went on to show his art at the Pompidou in Paris, the National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the National Gallery of Canada. His work sold for hundreds of thousands of

dollars. He created an entire artistic movement, known as the Woodland School. Norval became known as the Picasso of the North. So how did he become one of the most faked artists in the world? To figure that out, we need to look at one painting, the painting that a rock star bought, the painting that cracked this all open. This ascent isn't for everyone.

You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always overdelivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo.ca.

Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of The Debaters, Canada's comedy competition judged by live audience applause. This week's episode asks if children are smarter than their parents. So tune in to find out who wears the smarty pants in their families, wherever you get your podcasts. This was one of the first things I saw as a kid of Norval's work. It's the cover of Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws. It's an album by Bruce Coburn. I used to listen to Bruce Coburn all the time in the 80s. Bruce actually commissioned Norval to paint this for the cover.

It's greens, reds, blues. It's sort of like a, looks like a sea creature. And it's these sort of ominous figures at the back. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're kind of, they look almost like skeletons. Yes, yes. This is Kevin. My name is Kevin Hurt.

I am a, I guess I'm an artist, musician. Most people would maybe know me from playing with the band Bare Naked Ladies. It's a Sunday morning in Toronto. We're in Kevin's home, sitting in his den. Kevin's showing me the CD case for Bruce Coburn's album. Oh, my gosh. Have you ever seen that? No.

I've heard some of the music of Bruce had been on that. Yeah, this has one of his most popular songs called Wondering Where the Lions Are. Oh, I love that thing. Yeah. Oh, sun's up, looks okay, the world survives into another day, and I'm thinking about eternity. Some kind of ecstasies got a hold on me, and I'm wondering where the lions are. Norval's art on that Bruce Colburn album really stayed with Kevin. When his band hit it big, he bought a new home.

This home were in, and he wanted to put a Norval painting in it. I immediately thought of Norval and just thought, I wonder if I could find one of his works. And so I started sort of searching for galleries that sold his work. And I read a few things like, Be Careful. There's fakes out there. So I went to a gallery in Yorkville here in Toronto called the Masleck MacLeod Gallery. The gallery was owned by this guy Joe, or Joseph McLeod. I walked in and sure enough,

there was some beautiful Norval-Morosso paintings in the front room, you know, $100,000. And you would, you know, your jaw would drop and say, oh, my God, this is beautiful. And Joe would say, oh, well, I have other ones that aren't that expensive if you'd like to look at them. And then you would be led to this other room. Kevin and Joe chatted, got to know each other a bit. You know, and I liked Joe. He was an English teacher at one point. He wrote books of poetry that were.

published. I really felt like, oh, this is a guy who cares and he's part of the family. Joe told Kevin that he knew the Moro family. I thought, okay, I'm not buying it from a stranger online or something. And I asked him about it. I said, well, I've heard there's lots of fakes out there and he said, well, you've come to the best place. This is the safest place to buy a Moro painting because I'm here to guide you. The painting I bought was called Spirit Energy of Mother Earth. It was mostly green and black. I liked it originally because it had animals on it.

It had bears and like a sort of a sea creature. It's square, about five and a half feet wide, and Novell's signature is there, in Creselabics at the bottom of the canvas. Kevin was excited about the painting. He wanted to show it to people. And in 2010, he was asked to curate a show at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the AGO.

So that show was up for a few days. I had a great feeling about it. A lot of people came out. We had a good time. And then I got a call from the AGO. The display was on a couple of walls and displayed in what in the museum world we might say the Salon style of hang.

In other words, one painting over top the other. This is Gerald McMaster. I am Plains Cree from Saskatchewan, and I'm also a member or citizen of the Sikika Nation of Alberta. The same community that I'm from. He was a curator at the AGO, but he's also an amazing artist in his own right. My position at the Archaeo of Ontario was the head of Canadian.

Canadian art. So I was familiar with both Canadian art and all sorts of indigenous art. And so I went over to see the exhibition was really quite interesting. Mr. Hearn was not present. At the time, I didn't know who he was. And so the manager asked me, so what do I think about the works? What do I think of the display? I said, to me, they're questionable. Gerald knows Norval's work well, and Kevin's painting, something wasn't right. His painting was dated to 1974, and that raised a red flag for Gerald. My writing is different than yours, and it's different from someone else's writing. The same with drawing, the same with painting.

There's a kind of visual signature in the work, and so when you're studying him, his work enough from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, you can immediately understand what I mean. And it starts to shift in the 80s and 90s and the 2000s. And I think that someone suggesting this was work from the 70s, that's why I said it was questionable, because it just didn't feel it was from that period. It looked like something much, much later, whether it was by Morisso himself, It's hard to say, or someone imitating him. Gerald told the AGO manager that he had his doubts about Kevin's painting.

And she passed the message on to him. I was told Gerald McMaster had to take your painting down. He feels it's questionable. And then I got a message from Gerald saying, Kevin, would you like to meet for coffee or tea? And so we met, and that's when it's, started sinking in, for real. Well, I think meeting me was the first step.

I think that he was beginning to do his homework. When someone who's just starting out collecting and you want to put some money into collecting and you're disappointed in the fact that you may have purchased something that's questionable, it can break your heart. You know, it makes you nervous, it makes you anxious. And I think that that's what Kevin was feeling. My heart dropped.

I was disappointed. I was embarrassed. I wasn't completely surprised. You know, I felt, I felt disappointed in myself for trusting people. And that was a hard thing. I always used to trust people. I asked Joe if I could come see him, and he said, yes, come see me, and if you're unhappy with your painting, I'll give you your money back.

So Kevin goes back to see Joe McLeod, the gallerist who sold him his painting. And when I went to see him, it was like a different person. He had us sitting in a dark room, and all the lights were off. everything sort of flipped like I'd just suddenly gone down the rabbit hole into darkness and he said Kevin I can't give you your money back

that would set off a chain of events that would result in the closing of my gallery and he said I either want an apology from Gerald McMaster that says that he was sorry for taking the painting down or I want a written letter from Gerald saying

that he believes the painting is fake, in which case I will sue the AGO. And I said, well, what does that have to do with me? You know, like I bought the painting from you and why don't we explore the painting together and prove it's real, and we can show that to the AGO. And he said, Kevin, have you ever heard that saying, have you stopped beating your wife?

And I said, no. He said, well, if you say, yes, I've stopped beating my wife, you're admitting that you beat her. And if you say, no, you're still beating your wife. And then he said, I'm sorry. I can't help you. You have a beautiful Norval-Marso painting. You know, I left his gallery and said,

okay, I'm on my own here. I either have to let this go or try to find out what the truth is. The room that we've been sitting in, Kevin and I, this den in his home. It's the same room where his painting used to hang. It's not on the wall anymore, but he thinks about it all the time, because it kind of changed the course of his life.

There's an opening sequence in the film Blue Velvet. The song Blue Velvet is playing. You see Blue Sky. You see a picket fence. You see the traffic guard waving their hand. motioning for the kids to cross the street. I think a school bus goes by and then you start going towards the lawn.

There's a sprinkler. There's a dog. You go into the grass and the sound gets louder and darker. And you go into the dirt, into the wet mud, and then there's bugs

and they're all eating something or fighting. And that is a perfect metaphor for this journey. It goes from an elite sort of art gallery in Yorkville all the way to Thunder Bay into this dark underworld. That's quite a journey. I'm in my studio.

I have a blank canvas on the wall, and I'm just kind of looking at it, thinking, what am I going to make of this? I'm just going to start jessowing. I have clear jesso, the wooden canvases, so I can start the drawing process on them, and then from there I start to paint. I'm an artist. The way I understand things, make sense of them, is to paint them, to create. and there's a lot to try to make sense of with Norval.

In some ways, I feel a kinship with him. His work was bold, unapologetic, fierce, all things an artist wants to be. But somehow his life, his work, got wrapped up in what's believed to be the biggest art fraud in the world. So on another piece of paper, I just kind of draw, draw, you know, basically. sort of plan, and for this one I have Norfeld, kind of in the middle, full body. When I set out to paint something, I look at it closely, study it, break it down into the smallest parts, and then try to put it back together again on the canvas, kind of like a detective, reconstructing a crime scene.

Over the next five episodes, I'm going to take you into beauty and darkness here in Canada and in Australia, too. We're heading into the underbelly of a devastating art crime, one that is still unraveling. When Kevin came to me, I already had a sense of the size of this fraud. This wasn't just some little scam that had happened to, one or two people. It was much, much bigger than that. So I wanted to work on it. It looked like a huge injustice, if nothing else, then a huge mystery to be unraveled. That's on the next episode

of Forged. Forged is a co-production of CBC in Canada and ABC in Australia. It was produced by Kyle Musica and showrunner Zoe Tennant. Contributing reporter is Luke Rinaldi. Additional production support from Rudy Bremer and Anna Marie Harding. Our contributing editor is Phelan Johnson, and our senior producer and story editor is Veronica Simmons. Sound design and original music by Graham MacDonald. Emily Metteau is our fact-checker.

Rochevary is our coordinating producer, with voiceover direction for this episode by Athena Karkanis. At CBC podcasts, executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager, and Arif Nirani is director. Special thanks to the CBC Indigenous Office. At ABC, Calric Martin and Jessica Radburn are executive producers. That was the first episode of Forged. If you like what you heard, you can find all the episodes from the series right now wherever you get your podcasts.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca.com.