10 clever forgeries that museums mistook for originals

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Artistic counterfeiting is a very real threat that museums constantly have to contend with. From time to time, fake artifacts appear in many museums, which can be exhibited for several years before experts realize that it is a fake. For counterfeiters, the high price tags attached to these counterfeits are often enough incentive to continue creating counterfeits. Art scammers often go to great lengths to deceive museums into buying their work. Some forgeries are so good that it is difficult for historians and archaeologists to distinguish them from real things. Among the museums that have become victims of counterfeits, there is even the famous Louvre, where for many years successful copies were exhibited instead of the originals, and no one even knew about it.

1. Three Etruscan warriors

In 1933, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York added three new works of art to its exhibition. These were sculptures of three warriors of the ancient Etruscan civilization. The seller, an art dealer named Pietro Stettiner, claimed that the sculptures were made in the 5th century BC. Italian archaeologists were the first to raise concerns that the statues might be fakes. However, the museum's curators refused to heed the warning because they believed they had managed to get their hands on the art at a bargain price and did not want to lose them. Later, other archaeologists noted that the statues had unusual shapes and sizes for works of art created at the time.

The body parts were also sculpted in unequal proportions, and the entire collection had almost no damage. The museum did not find out the truth until 1960, when archaeologist Joseph Noble recreated samples of the statues using the same techniques as the Etruscans, and stated that the statues in the Metropolitan Museum could not have been made by the Etruscans. Investigations have shown that Stettiner was part of a large group of forgers who conspired to create and sell statues. The team copied sculptures from collections held in several museums, including the Metropolitan itself. One of the warriors was copied from a Greek statue in a book from a Berlin museum. The head of another warrior was copied from a drawing on a real Etruscan vase, which was exhibited in the museum.

The sculptures also had disproportionate body parts because they were too large for the studio, and this forced the forgers to reduce the size of some parts. One of the sculptures also did not have a hand, because the counterfeiters could not choose in which gesture to depict the hand.

2. Persian mummy

In 2000, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan were practically embroiled in a diplomatic scandal over the mummy and coffin of an unidentified 2,600-year-old princess. The remains, commonly referred to as the "Persian mummy", were discovered when Pakistani police officers raided a house in Haran after receiving a tip that the owner was illegally trying to sell antiques. The owner was a certain Sardar Vali Riki, who tried to sell the mummy to an unknown buyer for 35 million pounds.

Ricky claimed that he found the mummy and coffin after the earthquake. Iran soon claimed ownership of the mummy, believing that Riki's village was located right on its border. The Taliban, who ruled Afghanistan at the time, later joined the "battle for the mummy." The mummy was sent to the National Museum of Pakistan and put on public display. Already there, archaeologists discovered that some parts of the coffin look suspiciously too modern.

In addition, there was no evidence that any tribes in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan ever mummified their dead. Further analysis showed that in fact the mummy is the remains of a 21-year-old woman, who could very well have been the victim of a murder. She was taken to the morgue and the police arrested Ricky and his family.

3. Fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of handwritten scrolls containing Jewish religious texts. They were created approximately 2,000 years ago and are among the oldest written records of Jewish biblical passages. Most of the scrolls and fragments are kept in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and some are in the hands of private collectors and museums, including the Museum of the Bible in Washington (five fragments). However, in 2018 it turned out that counterfeits were stored in Washington. The deception was discovered after the fragments were sent to Germany for analysis after experts raised the alarm. It turned out that the museum had spent millions of dollars purchasing fake scroll fragments.

4. A number of works in the Brooklyn Museum

In 1932, the Brooklyn Museum received 926 works of art from the estate of Colonel Michael Friedsam, who had died a year earlier. These were paintings, jewelry, woodwork and pottery from ancient Rome, the Chinese Qing dynasty and the Renaissance. Colonel Friedsam donated priceless pieces of art to the museum, provided that his family would receive permission for the sale or removal of any item. This condition became a problem decades later, when the museum discovered that 229 artworks were fakes.

The Brooklyn Museum could not remove the forgeries from the stands, because the last of Colonel Friedsam's descendants died half a century ago. The museum also cannot throw them away because the Association of American Museums has strict rules governing the storage of art. In 2010, the Brooklyn Museum went to court with a request to decommission these forgeries.

5. Henlein's pocket watch

Peter Henlein was a locksmith and inventor who lived in Germany between 1485 and 1542. Most have not even heard his name, but everyone knows and uses his invention: the pocket watch. Henlein invented the watch when he replaced the heavy weights used in watches with a lighter spring, which allowed him to reduce the size of the watch. One of Henlein's alleged earliest creations has been housed in the German National Museum in Germany since 1897. This pocket watch resembles a small jar and fits in the palm of your hand. However, a scandal erupted around them when some historians began to claim that the so-called Henlein watches were fakes and not the original (even though the inscription on the inside of the case back said that they were made by Peter Henlein in 1510) …

A 1930 report indicated that the inscription was added years after the watch was allegedly made. Later tests showed that most of the watch parts were made in the 19th century, that is, it is a fake. However, other experts speculate that the parts were manufactured during an attempt to fix the watch.

6. Almost all exhibits in the Mexican Museum of San Francisco

In 2012, the Mexican Museum in San Francisco received partner status with the Smithsonian Institution. This status allows the museum to borrow and lend works of art in more than 200 museums and institutions with partner status. However, the Smithsonian requires member museums to authenticate their collections before they can start lending art.

In 2017, the Mexican Museum found that only 83 of the first 2,000 artworks it appreciated were genuine. This extremely worried specialists, given that the museum's collection contains 16,000 works of art. According to experts, half of the museum's inventory is counterfeit. Some of them were deliberately created in order to pass them off as originals, while others were originally intended for decoration. Some were not even associated with Mexican culture at all. The sheer number of counterfeits is not surprising, given that the museum received most of its collections from patrons and did not bother to confirm their authenticity.

7. Princess Amarna

In 2003, the city council of Bolton, UK, decided to purchase several new works of art for their local museum. The choice fell on the supposedly 3300-year-old statue called "Princess of Amarna", depicting a relative of Pharaoh Tutankhamun from ancient Egypt. The sellers of the statue claimed that it was excavated in Egypt. This claim was confirmed by the British Museum, which found no signs of fraud after examining the statue. Satisfied with this, the Bolton City Council paid £ 440,000 for the statue, which was displayed in the museum.

A few years later, the Bolton Museum found the British Museum was wrong. The statue was a forgery by Sean Greenhalsh, an infamous forger who created fake artwork and sold it to museums as originals. Ironically, Greenhalsh lived in Bolton and created this sculpture there. In 2007, he was sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.

8. Golden crown in the Louvre

In the 1800s, two men contacted jeweler Israel Rukhomovsky in Odessa (present-day Ukraine) to order a Greek-style gold crown as a gift to an archaeologist friend. In fact, the men did not have any archaeological friend and wanted to sell the crown as an original piece of art from ancient Greece. The scammers claimed that the crown was a gift from the Greek king to the Scythian king in the third century BC. Several British and Austrian museums refused to buy the crown, but the scammers got lucky when the Louvre bought it for 200,000 francs.

Some archaeologists have raised concerns that the crown could become fake shortly after it was exhibited at the Louvre. However, no one listened to them, because they were not French. The archaeologists were right in 1903, when a friend of Rukhomovsky told the jeweler that he saw his work in the Louvre. Rukhomovsky went to France with a reproduction to prove that he really made the crown. A century later, the Israel Museum borrowed the crown from the Louvre and exhibited it as an original piece by Rukhomovsky.

9. More than half of the paintings in the Museum of Etienne Terrus

The Etienne Terrus Museum is a little-known museum in Elne, France that exhibits works by the French artist Etienne Terrus, who was born in Elne in 1857. In 2018, the museum added 80 new paintings to its collection. However, it was soon discovered that about 60 percent of the entire museum collection were fakes, which were identified by experts who were invited to catalog new items. Several paintings also depicted buildings that were not yet built at the time Terrus was alive. Further analysis showed that 82 of the 140 paintings in the museum are fakes. Most of them were acquired between 1990 and 2010.

10. Everything in the Museum of Art Forgeries

The Museum of Forgeries is a true museum in Vienna, Austria dedicated exclusively to counterfeit artifacts and works of art. For example, it contains pages from the diary of Adolf Hitler, which were actually made by the forger Konrad Kuyau. The museum divides its collections into forgeries intended to imitate the style of a more famous artist, forgeries intended for sale as previously unknown works of a famous artist, and forgeries intended to be presented as originals of already known works of art. It also has a category for works of art, which are replicas made by artists after the death of the original artist.

Such pieces are quite popular with collectors, even though they were never considered original. The Museum of Forgeries also has exhibitions of notorious counterfeiters such as Tom Keating, who has created more than 2,000 fake art in his lifetime. Keating deliberately made mistakes in his art so that they could be identified as fakes long before the sale. He called these deliberate mistakes "time bombs."