VANCOUVER — A B.C. artist who worked tirelessly to combat fraudulent Indigenous art has died.
Lucinda Turner, who apprenticed and collaborated with Nisg’aa sculptor and totem pole carver Norman Tait, died on Monday. She was 63.
Turner had worked to track and challenge fraudulent Indigenous art, including images and works appropriated without permission on merchandise such as masks, T-shirts and luggage. She drew attention to the illicit trade and helped Indigenous artists claim their copyright.
In 2017, she started the Facebook group Fraudulent Native Art Exposed and More, which has garnered more than 4,000 members.
Bree Madory, an administrator of the group, said: “This is a huge loss to our community. She spent thousands of dollars out of her own pocket fighting the theft of Indigenous art.
“Lucinda was passionate about education and bringing awareness to fake native art, and although she is no longer with us, her legacy lives on through all of the lives she has touched.”
Of Scottish and British heritage, Turner was born in 1958 and moved to Vancouver in 1976. She studied art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and sciences at Langara College.
She met Tait in 1989 at the opening of a Vancouver gallery. The pair collaborated on hundreds on carvings and artwork until Tait’s death in 2016, when Turner retired. One of their earliest commissions was Heart of the People, an eagle carving from a 180-kilogram block of laminated alder, hung in the boardroom of the Vancouver Stock Exchange in 1996.
According to Turner’s biography at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in Seattle, she became involved in exposing fraudulent art after Tait’s death, when she discovered that his and other artists’ works were being stolen and listed for sale on the internet.
She sent thousands of letters on behalf of 50 artists to companies using stolen designs to hawk their wares.
— With files from The Canadian Press
