Museum boss admits Picassos exhibited for 3 years are fakes she painted herself — including one hung upside down
An exhibition of Picasso paintings that made headlines for gender discrimination is now back in the news after the artwork was revealed as fake.
Kirsha Kaechele, the curator of the art collection at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia, confessed that she actually painted the works she passed off as Pablo Picasso’s and didn’t get caught for years.
“I knew of a number of Picasso paintings I could borrow from friends, but none of them were green and I wished for the Lounge to be monochrome,” Kaechele wrote on the museum’s blog. “I also had time working against me, not to mention the cost of insuring a Picasso — exorbitant!”
“A few days later I was having drinks with my friend Natalie. ‘Maybe I should just make the paintings myself,’ I said. We laughed—how absurd. But then, as with many absurd ideas, I decided it was a good one. So I made the artworks, quite painstakingly, with my own hands.”
The knock-offs have been on display for three years. But Kaechele’s confession came only after a reporter and the Picasso Administration, the French organization that oversees the Spanish painter’s estate and the rights to his works, raised questions about their authenticity.
One of the fakes was even hung upside down, which Kaechele — who is also the wife of the gallery’s owner, David Walsh — believed was the thing that finally exposed her.
“I imagined that a Picasso scholar, or maybe just a Picasso fan, or maybe just someone who Googles things, would visit the Ladies Lounge and see that the painting was upside down and expose me on social media,” Kaechele wrote in her post, titled “Art is Not Truth: Pablo Picasso.”
“But no one did.”
These same creations once sparked a gender discrimination lawsuit because they were on display in the Ladies Lounge, an area of the museum limited to women visitors only.
As a result of the suit, the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal ordered the museum to allow men into the lounge, which did not sit well with Kaechele, who found a loophole around the ruling.
She ended up installing a toilet in the Ladies Lounge, turning it into a women’s bathroom, which created another uproar.
MONA confirmed the statements Kaechele made in her blog were accurate. The museum’s spokesperson, Sara Gates-Matthews said that the post was “truthfully Kirsha’s admission.”
With Post Wires
