by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Apr 14, 2018 |
The prevalence of forgeries is a major problem affecting the art market. Buyers fear purchasing forged works, worried about financial loss and humiliation amongst their peers. (This is one reason that completing due diligence prior to a purchase is so important.) Sellers are nervous about lawsuits and reputational harm. Connoisseurs and advisors are concerned about offering opinions about particular artworks. And scholars fear that these objects will damage the art historical record. The financial and informational damage caused by forgeries is hard to quantify. However, art market professionals know that many forgeries are on the market.
When forgeries make their way into museum collections, it’s particularly newsworthy. Museums, not just repositories for art, are educational institutions charged with the extraordinary yet difficult task of serving as cultural and art historical experts. Quite understandably, these institutions are fallible and sometimes err in their determinations. One sculpture that has received a great deal of attention is the Getty Kouros. Disagreement amongst scholars led the museum to label the work as “Greek, about 530 B.C., or modern forgery.” However, it was announced by the NY Times that the museum finally conceded that it is a forgery.
To read more about forgeries, due diligence prior to the acquisition of art, and famous forgery cases, we invite you to read “Are you Faux Real? An Examination of Art Forgery and the Legal Tools Protecting Art Collectors” or the shorter “Purchase Art in a Market Full of Forgeries: Risks and Legal Remedies for Buyers.”
by Amineddoleh & Associates LLC | Jun 14, 2017 |
The Getty Villa has long been scrutinized for acquiring objects without complete provenance, in turn, supporting the market for looted antiquities. These questionable activities were the focus of Chasing Aphrodite. The book delves into the often hidden world of museum management, exposes some of the unethical practices of museum employees, and examines the purchase of looted items, including the famed Venus of Morgantina (perhaps actually a representation of Persephone) that was eventually returned to Sicily. During the past decade, the Getty has returned dozens of looted items to Mediterranean nations. In 2006, the museum returned or committed to return four looted items to Greece. Then in 2007, in the wake of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s return of the Euphronios Krater, the Getty signed an agreement to repatriate 39 items to Italy.
Then yesterday it was announced that the museum would
return a 1st century BC statue of Zeus. Italian authorities proved that the object had come from an area near Naples after they found a fragment believed to join the figure. To support their demand for restitution, the authorities noted that there is no documentation of legal export of the statue from Italy. Interesting, the work was sold to the museum by
Lawrence and Barbara Fleischman (who have been implicated in other illicit antiquities claims) at the time that the now-disgraced
Marion True was still the Getty Villa’s senior antiquities curator.
We are still awaiting progress made on issues related to the extremely valuable and historically significant “
Victorious Youth” (also known as the “Fano Athlete” or “Getty Bronze”). As the statue is the only extant statue by Lysippos (Alexander the Great’s personal sculpture), its significance cannot be overstated. For this reason, the statue has become a fixture in the Getty’s collection, but remains a treasure that Italian authorities are actively hoping to recover.
The prevalence of forgeries is a major problem affecting the art market. Buyers fear purchasing forged works, worried about financial loss and humiliation amongst their peers. (This is one reason that completing due diligence prior to a purchase is so important.) Sellers are nervous about lawsuits and reputational harm. Connoisseurs and advisors are concerned about offering opinions about particular artworks. And scholars fear that these objects will damage the art historical record. The financial and informational damage caused by forgeries is hard to quantify. However, art market professionals know that many forgeries are on the market.