Clementine Hunter Home and Studio

Recognition and counterfeits both came late. Sixty of Clementine Hunter's paintings hung at Louisiana State University in 1971, Radcliffe included her in its Black Women Oral History Project in 1980, and Governor Edwin Edwards made her an honorary colonel in 1987. As her prices rose, fakes followed: William Toye was charged in 1974 with forging 22 of her paintings, and an FBI investigation that began in 2009 ended with Toye pleading guilty in 2011. Investigators relied on her fingerprints and paint smudges along the edges of genuine works.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Melrose Plantation — steps away
  The Cane River estate built on land granted to Louis Metoyer, son of Marie Thérèse Coincoin, with the Yucca House and African House, later an artists' retreat; guided tours Thursday to Sunday.
• St. Augustine Church, Isle Brevelle — 0.6 mi
  The parish church at the heart of the Cane River Creoles of color, begun by Augustin Metoyer on his family's land and still holding Mass for the community that grew from Marie Thérèse Coincoin's children.
• Cane River Creole National Historical Park — 4.9 mi
  Oakland and Magnolia, two Cane River cotton plantations kept as they stood, told through the enslaved families who worked them, the 1864 and 1804 freedom seekers and the tenant farmers who stayed into the 1960s.
• Kisatchie National Forest: Longleaf Vista — 8.8 mi
  A free ridge-top overlook and 1.5-mile loop above the 8,700-acre Kisatchie Hills Wilderness on the Longleaf Trail Scenic Byway, in the forest Caroline Dormon helped win in 1930.

More markers nearby

• African House and Clementine Hunter's Murals — steps away
• Yucca House — steps away
• Ghana House — steps away
• Big House — steps away