Forgery Museum

We indeed live in a strange world, where forgery can land you in jail, but it can also make you a star in your own right. The Museum of Art Fakes exists to bring you face to face with a phenomenon we all hear about, but rarely are aware of if ever we come into contact with it. 

The privately owned museum collects forgeries. Why? I guess because the owners are fascinated by the stories of the forgers themselves. Indeed this is the case. Since visiting the museum, I have now learnt that there now exists a market for some of these forgeries, some being quite expensive. 

Some forgers start out of sheer frustration that their own art careers are not progressing, other from their pure disgust with the art establishment and its market, seeking to teach them a lesson, while of course there are those who are just purely in it for the profit. 

The forgers usually require accomplices to pass off the works as originals and to fake the documentation. This documentation is known as the provenance. So it usually falls to a shady art dealer or gallerist to be the middle man. Over the years more and more "originals" have proven to be fakes. World renowned museums are not immune to being duped, nor was even the Queen of England. One of Elizabeth's Vameer's was proven to be fake. It is suspected that a very high percentage to "originals" are indeed fakes, but the art world keeps tight lipped about what they know lest the bottom fall out of their business.

The British art restorer Tom Keating, who claimed to have faked over 2,000 works by more than 100 different artists deliberately inserted "time bombs" and anachronisms into his paintings. These "time bombs" were in the form of materials that would destroy the work if any restoration work was applied to the work or painting secret messages with lead white paint that would show up if the painting was ever x-rayed.

The museum also has counterfeit money on display as well as some of the pages from the "Hitler Diaries" that appeared some years ago. During the war, the Germans hit upon the idea to produce fake British pound notes and flood the U.K. with them and thereby destabilising the economy. However, the notes in the end were not used for the original purpose, but rather to pay off their spies or purchase things that trade sanctions prevented them from obtaining.

But the top Nazis themselves could also be fooled by forgeries. Han van Meegeren became a national hero after World War Two when it was revealed that he had sold a forged painting to Hermann Göring during the Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands.

Even the Master Painters themselves were not above forgeries. When Michelangelo was an apprentice, his master handed him a work to copy. When he was finished, he returned in his copy as the original, unbeknown to his master. It was only later that he revealed the deception. Thankfully, he received much praise for such fine work.

Although the museum is not that large, you'll certainly spend time there engrossed in the fascinating stories.

Museum of Art Fakes
Löwengasse 28
1030 Vienna
Austria
www.faelschermuseum.com

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