The MONA (Museum of New and Old Art) in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, has long boasted several high-profile pieces by painter Pablo Picasso among their collection. Now, it seems, at least some of those Picasso pieces weren’t painted by Picasso after all. Two of the museum’s prize pieces have just been exposed as forgeries…by the forger herself.
Painter Kirsha Kaechele, the museum’s curator and the wife of its owner, published a blog post on Wednesday, July 10, wherein she confessed that she forged the paintings when she couldn’t find an appropriate piece to hang in the Ladies’ Lounge, a green-themed room that the museum has since closed.
She wanted, she explained, a monochrome experience in the room, and none of the Picassos in the collection fit the color palate, and time was short. The museum couldn’t afford the exorbitant cost of acquiring and insuring a new Picasso painting. During a conversation with a friend where they shared jokes over the predicament over drinks, Kaechele found herself joking that she should just paint a couple pieces for the event—after all, who was going to notice?
The more she thought about the idea, the more it seemed to make sense to her, so she took the leap and painted some appropriate pieces, then hung them for exhibition. She then claimed that she had inherited the previously-unknown paintings from her great-grandmother.
That was four years ago. Kaechele said that she’s been waiting ever since for someone to notice the problematic Picassos, but nobody did, so she decided to expose the scam herself. She also admitted that several other of the pieces once exhibited in the Ladies’ Lounge were fraudulent.
The MONA has a checkered recent history where Picasso’s work is concerned. In June of 2024 it hung some famous paintings by the artist in the women’s restroom, allegedly to make a point about women’s supposed historical exclusion from the artistic world after men were allowed into a “women’s only” museum event.
