Fakes in a Museum’s Collection
This post is going to tackle an interesting question, what should museums and galleries do once they realize they have fakes or forgeries in their collections? And what do they do with pieces that they can’t verify the provenance of but don’t know for sure that they’re fake?
Courtauld Gallery
In London, the Courtauld Gallery, located in the middle of the city, houses over 530 paintings and 26,000 drawings and prints. It is particularly known for its collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings amd its connection to the Courtauld Institute of Art, a self-governing college of the University of London.
In 1998, the Courtauld Gallery received a shocking piece of information. An anonymous caller tipped them off that 11 of the gallery’s old master paintings were not genuine and what’s more, the caller knew that they were forgeries created by art forger Eric Hebborn.
Since this call, there has just been a big question mark hanging over these works, obviously one call isn’t going to automatically mean that the paintings are, in fact, fakes but the museum immediately started investigating. With six of them, they were able to trace the provenance to the 1930s, so before Hebbon, which means he didn’t create them but it’s not known who they were really created by with certainty. And with the other five there is still a big question mark.
The Exhibit
This research and the lingering questions surrounding these paintings inspired Rachel Hapoienu, the Courtauld’s drawings cataloguer, and Karen Serres, the Courtauld’s curator of paintings, to create a new exhibit called Art and Artifact: Fakes from the Collection. The exhibit was composed entirely of forgeries, many of which have never been displayed publicly, to explore the value of counterfeit art.
“If you find a piece of art beautiful, or moving, or thought-provoking, does it matter the name of the artist? If a fake is good enough to fool all of the experts, does that mean its aesthetic quality is undisputed? Does knowing the artist’s identity automatically enhance our appreciation of a work of art?” (Nowakowski, 2023).
The exhibition included both paintings and drawings from the Courtauld’s collection as well as sculptures and more some of which were given to the gallery as known counterfeits for educational purposes and some weren’t discovered to be fake until after the gallery acquired them.
One of the paintings in the exhibit was a painting of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus; for a long time it was thought to be painted by Sandro Botticelli, an Italian master who painted The Birth of Venus among many other works. However, as experts examined the painting they realized that the inspiration for the Virgin Mary was a 1920s film star and upon closer inspection with modern tests, the pigments in the work were shown to be modern, thus confirming it to be a forgery. But is it still a beautiful piece of work? Absolutely.
Hapoienu and Serres also say that looking at these forgeries is an excellent teaching tool for both researchers and students and that by closely studying works of art and their provenance and comparing the style and craftsmanship to that of paintings by confirmed artists, they’re forced to closely consider the draftsmanship of each artist and become more closely acquainted with their style and skills.
Additionally, the exhibit was also meant to demonstrate that even the most rigorous and respected institutions can be fooled by forgers. “Any kind of hallowed institution is not infallible. We want to be more transparent about that, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to admit that you have forgeries. There have always been people who’ve been taken in by forgeries. In fact, many forgers were great artists in their own right.” (Nowakowski, 2023).
So it’s interesting: should these forgers who knew they were profiting off of another artist’s name and career get this recognition and be exhibited at prestigious galleries even though it’s educational? It’s definitely not how most institutions handle finding out about forgeries in their collection but it’s a unique approach.
Works Cited
Nowakowski, Teresa. “Every Piece in this Exhibition is a Fake”. The Smithsonian Magazine. 2023. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/forgery-art-london-exhibition-180982276/?itm_source=related-content&itm_medium=parsely-api