Global art crime is big business, and New Zealand is not exempt. It has its fair share of mystery disappearances, audacious forgers and stolen European art

From stolen Italian masterpieces ending up on the walls of a provincial South Island gallery, to a steady supply of fake Dick Frizzells being sold online, New Zealand’s history has been rife with art crime.

And the shady world of fakes, forgeries and fraudsters in the South Pacific island nation has for the first time been subjected to a comprehensive book, by art historian and independent curator Penelope Jackson.

“Any country that has an art history has an alternative history, one of criminal behaviour,” she explained. “Since Noah Charney founded the Association for Research into Crimes against Art in 2009, a greater effort has made to study the history of art crime internationally as well as assisting in preventing it. I thought it was high time that our own art crime history was put into book form.”

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Art crime is a huge issue globally, and New Zealand is not exempt. “Internationally it is estimated that art crime is third [biggest criminal enterprise] behind arms and drugs. But the cost to society is the cultural loss … and it continues on a grand scale.”

Guardian Australia: How significant is art crime in New Zealand compared to the rest of the world?

Penelope Jackson: In New Zealand we don’t have the ongoing saga of plundering of antiquities and cultural sites, as we’ve seen in recent times in places such as Syria. We have a different kind of art crime history, but nevertheless it is alive and well.



People were slightly shocked to read about the Macchiaioli works in the late 1990s: a suite of Italian 19th century paintings acquired by a New Zealand soldier during WWII ended up in a public collection and then became the subject of litigation between two nations. The works were in fact the property of a Jewish professor who had gone into hiding during the war. Many would have thought New Zealand would have been exempt from European art crime.

When our foremost modernist artist Colin McCahon’s Urewera Mural disappeared in an overnight raid in 1997, there was a national outcry. Tuhoe activists had taken it, to demonstrate what it was like to have something taken away – their land had historically confiscated by the crown and this was their way of making a statement.

How seriously is art crime taken in New Zealand?

Unfortunately the police don’t have the resources to have dedicated personnel to deal with art crime … It’s hard to argue that art crime is more important than, say, domestic violence.

But museum and public art gallery staff take art crime very seriously, and have protocols to follow in order to authentic or repatriate works. Unfortunately, forgeries populate public collections and though this can be embarrassing for professionals it is a reality, and being transparent about it is important.

For years, New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, had a suite of 36 supposed drawings catalogued as by the great 19th century Dutch artist, Petrus van der Velden. They were in fact by the forger Karl Sim. It is only in recently that they have been re-catalogued.

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What was your most surprising discovery researching this book?

I continue to be flabbergasted by the audacity of criminals. An Auckland artist was impersonated by a criminal for years – the latter would pose as the artist, giving the artist a bad reputation by asking for free accommodation, chatting up women, and cashing cheques.

In another case an architect was so admiring of Sir Toss Woollaston’s work that he painted works in the artist’s style and sold them as authentic paintings. Unfortunately unsuspecting vendors paid out large sums of money for these forgeries. The architect, who had designed the artist’s home, was quite delusional about his ability (in my mind he never quite nailed Woollaston’s palette), but clearly was an adoring fan.

What was the most dramatic or intriguing case of art crime you uncovered?

The most intriguing case would be that of Solomon J Solomon’s 1902 painting titled Psyche. It was removed from Christchurch’s Robert McDougall Art Gallery one night during the winter of 1942. It was never recovered, and an air of mystique surrounds its disappearance.

Over the years many theories have been offered up but the truth could in fact be that the cleaner damaged the painting with the broom handle and then made it look like a crime scene to cover up the accident. I don’t think we’ll ever know.

The truth could … be that the cleaner damaged the painting with the broom handle and made it look like a crime scene Penelope Jackson

Which New Zealand artists are most often targeted by criminals?

Perhaps currently it would be Dick Frizzell (b.1943). He is a very popular artist and his original prints are desirable. He has now found forgeries of his work on Trade Me. For him it means being very vigilant about keeping a check with online auction websites and then taking action when they do appear, which they have done regularly. When people are viewing a Dick Frizzell online they are often looking at it on a small screen and therefore don’t realise that it is a commercially produced print and not an original. As technology advances, printing methods improve and forgeries are more convincing to the unsuspecting buyer.

An artist of a very different ilk, Gottfried Lindauer (1839-1926), is another who has been the subject of fraudulent practice. In 2012 and again in 2015 two portraits of Lindauer’s, both in public collections, were found to be fraudulent. Historical portraits of Maori people remain popular, and where the supply does not meet the demand because the artist is deceased, the forger fills the gap. The forger has not been uncovered in either case.

How has the advancement of technology changed art crime?

In many ways technology has had a two steps forward, one back kind of effect on art crime. Certainly it’s easier to get an image of a stolen or vandalised work, or CCTV footage, out into the public arena now, and the internet plays a big part in solving art crimes.

Notorious forger Karl Sim was given a small fine for his 'artwork', and the job of painting the local public toilets Penelope Jackson

But advancements in technology also mean we have much more sophisticated methods of printing; for the uninitiated they could be tricked into purchasing quality copies made of engravings for instance.

Having copies made of paintings is also very easy now. The Chinese village of Dafen is home to thousands of copy artists; emailing a jpeg file to Dafen I had copies made of two works in a public collection recently. This was an exercise for an exhibition whereby visitors have to choose which one is the original and which one is the copy, and it took only four weeks for the copies to be made and sent back to New Zealand. They are scarily good. At the end of the exhibition the works will be destroyed so as not to cause confusion.

What needs to be done to begin tackling art crime in New Zealand?

When acquiring work purchasers often don’t ask enough questions around provenance – the history of ownership – to avoid acquiring a forgery or stolen art. New Zealand doesn’t have an art loss register, which would be a great tool in recovering stolen art and protecting purchasers.

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A greater awareness that we have an art crime problem, just like any other nation, is a good beginning point. Some readers have subscribed to the theory that art crime is a western European issue, but it’s global. Certainly the vast amount of copy art made in China now has made this a truly international problem.

We also seem to be lenient when it comes to sentencing art criminals. Community service is a favourite, which doesn’t deliver a strong enough message in my view. Our most notorious forger, Karl Sim, was given a small fine for his “artwork”, and the job of painting the local public toilets. He enjoyed the latter as it provided a blank canvas for him to paint and kept him in the spotlight, which he very much enjoyed. Nothing like a free advertisement!

• Art Thieves, Fakers and Fraudsters: the New Zealand Story by Penelope Jackson is out now through Awa Press/Penguin