More Authentication Concerns

Fellow appraiser Christine Gurensey, ISA CAPP sent me an interesting article recently published in the NY Times about art authentication.  As most appraisers are aware, art authentication by experts, scholars, foundations and connoisseurs have been declining due to the high potential of being sued, many times regardless of the decision.  I recently posted on the reluctance of scholars to attend a conference on the newly discovered Degas plaster casts (click HERE to read).


This is a troubling trend and if it continues it will effect many appraisals at the top end of the market.  The College Art Association has now started to offer insurance to members who authenticate art.  The market is adjusting, but given the amount of money in the art market, the risks of authentication are legitimate and problematic. This certainly is a topic most appraiser should be following.


The NY Times reports 

The anxiety has even touched the supreme arbiter of the genuine and fake: the catalogue raisonné, the definitive, scholarly compendium of an artist’s work. Inclusion has been called the difference between “great wealth and the gutter,” and auction houses sometimes refuse to handle unlisted works. As a result catalogue raisonné authors have been the targets of lawsuits, not to mention bribes and even death threats.

“Legal cage rattling was always part of the process,” said Nancy Mowll Mathews, president of the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association. But the staggering rise in art prices has transformed the cost-benefit analysis of suing at the same time that fraud has become more profitable, she said.

While some argue the fear is overblown, others warn the growing reluctance to speak publicly about authenticity could keep forgeries and misattributed works in circulation while permitting newly discovered works to go unrecognized.

The perceived crisis has prompted a pointed ethical debate: Do you speak out if you spot a suspicious work or keep quiet as lawyers recommend?

Art experts have been getting sued over their opinions since at least the days of Joseph Duveen, the flamboyant dealer who found himself in court in the 1920s after declaring “La Belle Ferronnière,” a supposed Leonardo painting for sale, to be a fake. Duveen’s judgment caused the Kansas City Art Institute to withdraw its offer of $250,000, and in the end Duveen settled by agreeing to pay the owner $60,000. (The painting is now considered to be by a follower of Leonardo.).

Source: The NY Times