The National Museum of Australia will investigate the donation of a $1.2 million painting by leading East Kimberley artist Rover Thomas following claims by some Thomas experts that the painting is vastly overvalued, lacks secure provenance and should not have been accepted by the museum.
The painting, Jabanunga aka Goorialla (Rainbow Serpent), created in 1996, two years before Thomas died, was donated to the museum by Melbourne arts patron and dealer Michael Blanche through the federal government’s Cultural Gifts Program, which provides the donor with a tax benefit, reducing their taxable income by the value of their donation.
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Gabriella Coslovich is an arts journalist with more than 20 years’ experience, including 15 at The Age, where she was a senior arts writer. Her book, Whiteley on Trial, on Australia’s most audacious of alleged art fraud, won a Walkley in 2018.
