Open Letter to the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society

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>>> Revised on December 2nd, 2009 - click HERE!--









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"Norval Morrisseau Collage" - compiled by Spirit Walker
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Dear Committee members of the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society,

My name is Spirit Walker ( my personal name can be available by contacting me at spiritwalker2008@gmail.com ). I am the BLOG Master of the NORVAL MORRISSEAU BLOG that addresses different issues of the Art of Norval Morrisseau. I have recently confronted Mr. Bryant Ross, who is the gallery director of Coghlan Art Studio/Gallery, by asking him indirectly how could he make such statements that all the paintings for sale on eBay are fakes? He has replied to me with quoted comment below:
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"Hi, my name is Bryant Ross and I am the director of Coghlan Art Studio and Gallery. I am the individual you refer to. My warning on E-bay is not meant to scare anyone. It is meant to inform the public about the status of the Morrisseau paintings on E-bay. I am doing this at the request of the artist himself. Out of all the paintings that I have displayed on my web site you had no trouble picking out the 2 fakes. I bought these 2 paintings from a dealer from Winnipeg. When Morrisseau told me that they were not his I realized that I had been ripped off and I took them off the market. I have since donated them at my own expense to the Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society to use as example of the fake paintings. It has never been stated that all the galleries in Canada have fake paintings. But there are many fakes in the marketplace. You seem to think that the motivation in this is money. The fact is that Norval Morrisseau does not want his legacy to include these fake paintings."

I have a special request for your organization that many of the readers of this BLOG would like to read about. Can you please verify that you have received these two paintings from Mr. Ross as he stated in his correspondence directed to me. These two paintings that he considers fake are at the top left corner and at the bottom right corner of my posting titled "Norval Morrisseau Collage" compiled by myself (click on image above to enlage it for closer examination). I presented these two paintings in question for the public to see how they compare with other paintings that are in my opinion original works of Norval Morrisseau.

Thank you,

Spirit Walker


Note: Committee members of NMHS are as follows: -

* Viviane Gray - Indian and Inuit Art Centre, Dept. of Indian Affairs & Northern Development;
* Lee Ann Martin - Curator of Contemporary Canadian Aboriginal Art, Museum of Civilization;
* Elizabeth McLuhan - Dept. of History, University of Winnipeg;
* Dr. Ruth Philips - Professor of Art History;
* Greg Hill - Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada;
* Richard H. Baker - Barrister and Solicitor.

They can be contacted at norvalmorrisseauheritage@gmail.com -

MISSION STATEMENT: "The Norval Morrisseau Heritage Society was established at the request of Norval Morrisseau to research, document and preserve his artistic achievement and protect the integrity of his art. It seeks to achieve this mission by establishing and maintaining a registry of his works, publishing and updating a catalogue raisonne of his artistic output and providing the necessary expertise to authenticate his art."

/The paintings in this posting are authentic works of © Norval Morrisseau/