Art Forger

TAKE THE SURVEY – Only a few more days left to take the Appraiser Workshops Fine and Decorative Arts Market Survey.  Click HERE to be part of the survey. Participation in the survey has been very good, but the more input we have, the stronger and more significant the results.  Please take a few minutes and complete the online survey.  The free results will be posted on the AW Blog, and will be available for download.  Click HERE to take the survey. 

---

The New York Times has a very good, and very interesting article on art forger Mark Landis.  Landis has traveled the country and represented himself as a collector and as a priest in donating his forged works to museums and cultural organizations.  He typically did not accept payment, nor did he look for tax deduction from the donated items.  It appears he was just interested in having his forged work accepted as legitimate and authentic pieces of art.

There may not be any legal issues as he did not accept compensation (although he did misrepresent what he was donating), but most museums and art theft experts are trying to get the word out to other museums in order to stop Landis from populating the cultural institutions with his forged art.

The NY Times reports

Unlike most forgers, he does not seem to be in it for the money, but for a kind of satisfaction at seeing his works accepted as authentic. He takes nothing more in return for them than an occasional lunch or a few tchotchkes from the gift shop. He turns down tax write-off forms, and it’s unclear whether he has broken any laws. But his activities have nonetheless cost museums, which have had to pay for analysis of the works, for research to figure out if more of his fakes are hiding in their collections and for legal advice. (The Hilliard said it discovered the forgery within hours, using a microscope to find a printed template beneath the paint.)

In the weeks since an article in The Art Newspaper first revealed the scope of the forgeries, museums and their lawyers have been trying to locate Mr. Landis, who was never easy to find in the first place because he often provided bogus addresses and phone numbers. But now he seems to have disappeared altogether. His last known attempt to pass off a forgery occurred in mid-November, when he presented himself, again as Father Arthur Scott, at the Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, bearing a French Academic drawing.

“It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve ever come across,” said Matthew Leininger, the director of museum services at the Cincinnati Art Museum, who first met Mr. Landis in 2007 when Mr. Leininger was the registrar at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and Mr. Landis offered to donate several works under his own name.

To read the full NY Times article, click HERE.