Federal Indigenous Art Collection has over 100 artworks 'not accounted for'

Officials with Crown-Indigenous dealings and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) ar looking for to caterpillar track land over 100 works of Indigenous art held in a federal collection that are unaccounted for.

The Indigenous Art Collection has a total of 5,176 works from established and emerging First Nations, Métis and Inuit artists, valued at about $14.4 million.

It is looked after by the Indigenous Art Centre, which was established in 1965 to support the acquisition, protection, preservation and promotion of contemporary Indigenous art, and has a gallery in Gatineau, Que.

According to a November 2024 audit of the collection, the collection was moved from the facility in Gatineau in 2022, due to renovations, and put temporarily in a Public Services and Procurement Canada storage facility as well as a third party storage facility, within the National Capital Region.

The audit said 132 works were "not accounted for."

At a meeting of the standing committee on Canadian Heritage on Nov. 19, CIRNAC associate deputy minister Rob Wright said their estimated value is $49,000 or about 0.34 per cent of the value of the total collection.

Deputy minister Valerie Gideon told the committee 12 have been located and 20 are reproductions. She said the majority of the unaccounted for pieces were loaned out to government offices in the 1980s for display purposes.

The loan program ended in 2017 and the offices were asked to send back the art.

Conservative MP Rachael Thomas asked if they have or are notifying the Indigenous artists.

“We are not notifying because the pieces are not deaccessioned," said Gideon.

Gideon said that means they are not yet identified as missing with certainty under the heritage rules and procedures.

Gideon said that since they are still working on tracing the inventory and reconciling cataloguing systems, they cannot be deemed missing.

Conservative MP Kerry Diotte asked Gideon "How can something be missing, that you can't find, and not be missing?" calling it "complete doublespeak."

The audit also said that at the time of the audit there weren’t functioning security cameras in the temporary storage facility, that a water leak in one of the storage facilities had damaged three paintings and that records of maintenance on the heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems were incomplete.

In a written statement, CIRNAC spokesperson Pascal Laplante said the department understands its responsibility to the collection and has accepted all the auditor's recommendations. 

"These pieces are considered ’unaccounted for,' not stolen, and there is no evidence of wrongdoing," the statement said.

Laplante said they have put in place improvements on record-keeping and collection management so that similar circumstances do not happen.

"These include securing and sustaining storage, enhancing oversight and accountability, establishing long-term financial planning, reinforcing operational controls, and evaluating the current governance structure."

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