Want to Commit Art Fraud? An Expert Shares 5 Strategies

The art world has become inundated with tales of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous behavior. Here is how cons are orchestrated.

by Richard Polsky March 14, 2024

Over the last few years, the art world has become inundated with tales of fakes, frauds, and unscrupulous behavior. Starting with the Knoedler scandal, and continuing with the Orlando Museum of Art debacle, a pattern of deceit has emerged. Since the art market is unregulated, it continues to attract individuals who don’t play by the rules—because, basically, there are none. Vigilance and common sense are the keys to staying out of trouble.

The remarkable thing about art fraud is that it can literally happen to anyone. As an art authenticator, I spend my days examining random works by Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, and I continue to be amazed by the forged images and fabricated provenances that I see. Over time, I’ve witnessed reoccurring scams, allowing me to compile a list of ways to commit art fraud—if you really want to. Obviously, getting away with it is easier said than done. But the following five examples bear watching, lest you get taken in by the deceptions that lie below the surface.

Digital collage by Elvin Tavarez for artnet


1. If at First You Can’t Sell a Fake, Try, Try Again Of the seven artists I authenticate, Jackson Pollock is the most complicated. One of the reasons why is because his forgeries often come from highly improbable sources that are impossible to trace. Just during the last two years alone, I’ve learned of an alleged major “drip” painting that was discovered in Bulgaria (of all places) and another that supposedly belonged to Fidel Castro (of all people). Needless to say, neither one of these paintings turned out to be authentic.

What’s really troubling is the surprising number of “Pollock” canvases which I’ve examined, and deemed inauthentic, that then repeatedly pop up on the market like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Usually, there’s a six-month lag until the same picture shows up again. When it does reemerge, it often winds up on eBay. The seller offers platitudes about its glorious history, its extraordinary investment potential, and their rigorous vetting of the piece. Unfortunately, they conveniently leave out the “minor detail” that it was previously rejected as a fake.

An act of fraud is only committed when you sell a counterfeit painting. Up until then, you can do whatever you want with a fake picture. But if you know it’s fake beforehand, and money changes hands, then you’ve crossed over into felonious territory. The owners of these bogus Jackson Pollocks all know the truth about what they’re selling, which means they’re 100 percent liable. Proving their chicanery is the tough part. Far better to avoid getting entangled in these recycled purchases.


2. Sell a Painting Allegedly Found in a Storage Locker Dealing with a “made-up” provenance is an occupational hazard for an art authenticator. Some of the backstories that accompany fake Jean-Michel Basquiats are outrageous. I often hear about paintings and drawings that were part of a trade between the original owner and Jean-Michel for drugs. Inevitably, no one can produce the name of the drug dealer. Or I’m told that the pusher died years ago. This makes it impossible to verify the story—which is exactly what the owner wants. It’s probably true that early in Basquiat’s career he occasionally swapped his art for narcotics. But good luck proving that a particular work can be traced to a specific individual.

A more common strategy for a con artist is to claim that a painting was found in an abandoned storage locker. Everyone has heard of storage lockers whose contents were sold for non-payment. There are professional pickers who cobble together a living buying and selling recovered items from these containers. On rare occasion they score a valuable find; perhaps a piece of antique furniture or a motorcycle. However, I’ve never heard of a painting by a major artist turning up this way. It simply doesn’t work like that. Anyone who collects art is aware of how valuable Basquiat’s work has become. If you were fortunate enough to own one of his canvases, you would never keep it in a storage unit.


3. Sell an Overly Restored Work as an Original Everyone is familiar with the notorious Salvator Mundi painting. To this day, no one has been able to figure out whether it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci, by his assistants (with an assist from the master), or by a completely different artist. The point is that Christie’s sold it as a Leonardo—and obviously the buyer believed this attribution. But what happens if, at a later date, someone uncovers irrefutable evidence that it’s not a Leonardo? Was fraud then committed? The answer is “no,” as long as Christie’s was fully convinced that it was real (and could provide strong evidence to back up its opinion).

This leads to another question: At what point does a work of art cross over from being executed by a specific artist, to being altered so heavily that it’s no longer his work? For example, I knew of a Joseph Cornell box where the wooden shell was fabricated by Cornell, a few of the interior objects were selected by him, and the verso of the box bore Cornell’s signature. Yet, this was clearly an unfinished assemblage. From what I understood, the piece was later restored by someone knowledgeable in Cornell’s work. But the conservator clearly got carried away; the box now contained an overabundance of ephemeral objects and came off as too slick. If you’re going to commit art fraud by completing an unfinished work, make sure you exercise restraint.

The recent story about A.I. being used to complete one of Keith Haring’s last paintings is an example of a painting (which in my opinion) could no longer be considered a Haring for two reasons. One, the validity of an A.I.-generated work has not been established. And two, authentication always comes down to the artist’s intent. Keith Haring’s intention was to leave the painting in its incomplete state—it was meant as a comment on the AIDS epidemic.


4. Whitewash a Painting Speaking of the Salvator Mundi, one of the more provocative stories to emerge from the controversy was the owner’s blatant attempt to validate his acquisition. The owner, said to be Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, approached the Louvre with an offer to lend his painting. At first, the Louvre’s curators proffered interest. If nothing else, it would have led to a surge in admissions. But the deal fell apart once MBS’s representatives demanded the painting be hung directly across from the Mona Lisa. The unambiguous message would have been that the Salvator Mundi is a Leonardo masterpiece just like the Mona Lisa.

This sort of thing has been going on for years. The quickest way to confer authenticity on a painting is “guilt by association.” If you own a picture where all signs point to it being genuine—but you can’t prove it—your best approach is to find a way to align it with an institution. It doesn’t have to be MoMA or the Met (though that would be good); any legitimate public or university museum will do. By hanging your painting, the institution is conferring authenticity. This is how the Orlando Museum of Art got into trouble with its show of questionable Basquiats. Bear in mind this is not committing fraud. It’s only fraud if the lender and/or the institution have suspicions about a painting’s validity (and the owner’s intention to sell it).


5. When It Comes to Documentation, Less Is More Scammers go out of their way to create elaborate paperwork. Their logic is that the greater the paperwork, the more likely the painting will pass muster as authentic. Wrong. All this does is create obfuscation. Over time, I’ve been privy to some impressive paperwork, including documents that include so many gold seals and elaborate rubber stamps that they become works of art in their own right.

If you want to commit fraud, one way to do so is by forging an art authentication committee certificate. In recent years, this has become a growth industry. The Andy Warhol market is rife with fake certificates of authenticity from the now-defunct Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. There have also been a blizzard of fake Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat certificates of authenticity, complete with counterfeit Julia Gruen and Gerard Basquiat signatures, respectively.

The trick for a con man is to master the subtleties and nuances of these certificates—which, so, far no one has been able to do. Forgers repeatedly make the same mistakes. They would be well-advised to watch Frank Abagnale, the slippery character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Catch Me If You Can and learn how to get it right.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/want-to-commit-art-fraud-an-expert-shares-5-strategies-2428909

Investigators say Chicago's Art Institute is holding onto 'Looted Art'

The Art Institute of Chicago. Ando Gallery. Courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
by Tom Mashberg and Graham Bowley

NEW YORK, NY.- New York investigators trying to seize a drawing from the Art Institute of Chicago filed an exacting 160-page motion Friday accusing the museum of blatantly ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been looted by the Nazis on the eve of World War II.

While the court papers, filed by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, did not accuse the museum of being party to the fraud, they said it had applied “willful blindness” to what the investigators said were clear indications that it was acquiring stolen property.

The drawing, “Russian War Prisoner,” by Egon Schiele, was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966. It is one of a number of works by Schiele that ended up in the hands of museums and collectors and have been sought by the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. The institute paid about $5,500 for the drawing, which has been valued by investigators today at $1.25 million.

In a statement, the Art Institute said it had good title to the work by Schiele, an Austrian expressionist, and would fight the district attorney’s attempt to seize it.

“We have done extensive research on the provenance history of this work and are confident in our lawful ownership of the piece,” the museum said, adding: “If we had this work unlawfully, we would return it, but that is not the case here.”

But the investigators said in their court filing that the institute’s “failure” to vet the work properly “undercuts any arguments that AIC were truly good-faith purchasers.”

Much of what was presented in the investigators’ voluminous filing had been cited in civil court cases pursued in recent years by the Grünbaum heirs. The current detailed presentation — which included more than 100 exhibits designed to trace the path of the artwork from the hands of Grünbaum to the Nazis to the museum — was aimed at pressuring the institute to follow the lead of seven other museums and collectors who have recently turned over Schiele works once owned by Grünbaum to the district attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.

The Art Institute has argued that the federal courts have already ruled in the matter, deciding that the heirs had come forward too late to lay claim to the work and that there was reason to believe the works were all inherited by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, who passed them on to a Swiss dealer in the 1950s.

The New York investigators took aim at that account in their motion, devoting page after page to evidence that they said showed the provenance documents brought forward by the dealer, Eberhard Kornfeld, to prove his account, contained forged signatures or were altered long after he came into possession of the Schieles in the mid-1950s.

“There is one person in this case who doctored” documents, “and always did so in pencil — Eberhard Kornfeld,” Matthew Bogdanos, chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, said in the court filing.

The investigators contend that, while it is not possible to absolutely determine how Kornfeld secured the Grünbaum art, it was most likely provided to him by other art dealers known to have relations with the Nazis. The court filing includes inventory records that prosecutors said establish that the works were in the possession of a Nazi-controlled storehouse in Austria in 1938 after Grünbaum was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany, where he was killed in 1941.

The filing also cites documents to show that the sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, had already fled the country when the “Prisoner” drawing, and others later obtained by Kornfeld, were in the Vienna storage facility. As a result, the investigators said, the works could not have been sold by her to Kornfeld.

In arguing it holds good title to the work, the Art Institute has relied on two federal court rulings. In one, rendered in 2011 involving another Schiele work once owned by Grünbaum, the judge described Kornfeld’s account as credible, and added that, regardless, the heirs were not timely in bringing a claim.

In a second case brought by the heirs and decided in November, a federal court in New York, citing the earlier federal case, awarded the Art Institute ownership of “Prisoner” because it, too, ruled that the Grünbaum heirs had waited too long to make a claim for the drawing.

A lawyer for the heirs, Raymond Dowd, said he had filed to ask the judge to reconsider the decision in this case and to allow him to file an amended complaint.

“The Art Institute of Chicago recently prevailed in civil litigation in federal court regarding Egon Schiele’s ‘Russian War Prisoner,’ successfully demonstrating that the claimants’ suit lacked merit,” the institute said in its statement.

“Federal court,” the statement said, “has explicitly ruled that the Grünbaums’ Schiele art collection was ‘not looted’ and ‘remained in the Grünbaum family’s possession’ and was sold by Fritz Grünbaum’s sister-in-law Mathilde Lukacs in 1956.”

The institute’s decision to continue to fight the efforts by Manhattan prosecutors to retrieve its Schiele work makes it a lone holdout among the museums and collectors who received warrants from investigators telling them they possessed stolen property.

Among those returning Grünbaum works in September were the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, both in New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California; Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and a longtime advocate of Holocaust restitution; and the estate of Serge Sabarsky, a well-known art collector.

Since then, two other institutions — the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College — agreed to surrender artworks once owned by Grünbaum.

One of the confusing aspects of the dispute is that a state court in New York has ruled in a completely opposite way and found that the Grünbaum Schieles were indeed looted.

While decisions in federal court have held that the Grünbaum heirs waited too long to start reclaiming the works, the 2018 New York state Supreme Court ruling found that Grünbaum had never sold or surrendered any of his works before his death, and that they were looted by the Nazis, making his heirs their true owners.

The ruling relied on the terms of the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, a U.S. law that seeks to ensure that “claims to artwork and other property stolen or misappropriated by the Nazis are not unfairly barred by statutes of limitations.”

Investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office became involved after the New York state court ruling. Prosecutors have said they have jurisdiction because some of the Grünbaum works passed from Kornfeld to a Manhattan dealer, Otto Kallir.

The Schiele works, including the “Prisoner” drawing, were sold by Kallir to a variety of buyers, and the drawing ultimately ended up at the Art Institute.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.https://artdaily.cc/news/166994/Investigators-say-Chicago-s-Art-Institute-is-holding-onto--Looted-Art-

Ringleader in Norval Morrisseau art fraud ring sentenced to 5 years on fraud charges

Fraud experts, Morrisseau estate say long journey to weed out fakes remains
Michelle Allan · CBC News

A camera captures a picture of a man walking by a painting done in the woodland style.

A reporter walks past 'Androgyny' by Norval Morrisseau (right) and 'Tweaker' by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun during a media tour of the Canadian and Indigenous Art: 1968 to Present at the National Gallery of Canada's contemporary art galleries Tuesday May 2, 2017, in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press )

One of eight people charged in what Ontario Provincial Police say is the largest art fraud investigation in Canadian history has been sentenced to five years incarceration, with credit for one year of time already served.

Gary Lamont pleaded guilty on Dec. 4 to a charge of making false documents, mainly artwork, that was attributed to Morrisseau and a count of defrauding the public in an amount exceeding $5,000.

Lamont oversaw the production and distribution of hundreds of forged artworks falsely attributed to Morrisseau starting in 2002, according to the agreed statement of facts submitted to the courts. According to the statement of facts, 190 "Lamont Ring Forgeries" have been identified to date, with 117 of them seized by investigators.

"To have one of the key figures that we've been interested in admit to his guilt in terms of creating fake Morrisseaus, that's a huge step forward," said Jonathan Sommer, a lawyer who specializes in art forgery.

Sommer represented Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn in a lawsuit against a Toronto art dealer for allegedly selling him a fake Morrisseau painting. The Ontario Court of Appeal sided with Hearn and awarded him $60,000 in damages. It used to be very difficult to convince police and courts to take art fraud seriously, said Sommer.

"They treat it almost like an amusing spectacle, you know, a tale of charming rogues that defraud people who have more money than they know what to do with," he said. "There's a lot of really ugly criminality that's connected with this art fraud, Sommer said." Sommer estimates there are significantly more fraudulent works in circulation than genuine Morrisseau paintings. "It severely muddied his legacy," he said. "They undermine the relationship between viewers of the art and who Morrisseau really was."

Police laid more than 40 charges against eight people this past March after a years-long investigation into the forgery of the famous Anishinaabe artist's work. The investigation led to the seizure of more than 1,000 pieces of forged Morrisseau artwork

"There is likely at least another 5,000 fraudulent artworks out there, " said Cory Dingle, executive director of Norval Morrisseau's estate. "The real battle hasn't even started." Morrisseau's estate faces an expensive and fraught task — finding, investigating and denouncing the thousands of fake works to preserve Morrisseau's authentic legacy.

Norval Morrisseau as artist-in-residence in the Thomson Shack at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinberg, Ont., on July 11, 1979. (Ian Samson/McMichael Canadian Art Collection Archives) The sheer volume of fakes to identify combined with the difficulty of legally proving them as inauthentic is an undue burden for the estate to bear, said Dingle.

"Canada really needs to have a federal arts-fraud division, because truly we are talking about our culture and our heritage that is being defrauded," he said. Some other countries allow police to work with artist's estates to identify and destroy fake paintings, said Dingle. "That's how they clean up their market. Right now, Canada has no mechanism such as that."

Diane Marie Champagne, Benjamin Paul Morrisseau, Linda Joy Tkachyk and David John Voss will be in court in Thunder Bay. Also charged are Jeffrey Gordon Cowan of Niagara-on-the-Lake, James (Jim) White of Essa Township and David P. Bremner of Locust Hill. They will be appearing in Barrie for pre-trial.

A legacy diminished, but not destroyed
As the founder of Woodlands style art, Morrisseau's influence is so pervasive that the impact of the fraud reverberates throughout the Indigenous art scene, said art gallery owner Sophia Lebessis, who is Inuk.

"You're filled with rage and disappointment on a cultural level because it's like, here's another aspect of our lives that are just taken over and destroyed," said Lebessis, who owns Transformation Fine Art, a Calgary-based gallery of Inuit and First Nations art.

While fraudsters have damaged Morrisseau's legacy, Lebessis said they can't take away the positive impact his art has on the people who view it.

"What these criminals are not going to take away from us is that magical moment when you're walking into a gallery or you're walking into a museum and you're seeing a Morrisseau for your very first time," said Lebessis,

"That feeling that you felt, and all of a sudden your worldview changes, of Indigenous culture and Indigenous people. All of a sudden you're connected to this master artist who you might never have met."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/norval-morrisseau-art-fraud-sentencing-1.7059535

A German Museum Employee Has Been Caught ‘Shamelessly’ Swapping Original Paintings for Fakes to Fund His Lavish Lifestyle

The man is said to have spent the money on a new apartment, wristwatches, and a Rolls-Royce.

Franz von Stuck, The Fairy Tale of the Frog King (1891). Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images.

A German museum employee has confessed to an audacious scheme, after he was caught swapping out paintings with forgeries and selling the originals to fund a luxury lifestyle. He has received a suspended prison sentence of one year and nine months and must pay back more than €60,000 ($63,500) to the unnamed German museum, the Munich District Court ordered on September 11.

The man, now aged 30, stole three paintings while working at the museum in Munich as a technician between May 2016 and April 2018. He replaced the paintings with fakes while they were in storage, consigning the originals to a Munich auction house.

The defendant allegedly used the money to pay debts and fund a luxury lifestyle, the court heard. “Among other things, he bought a new apartment, expensive wristwatches, and bought a Rolls-Royce,” read the verdict, noting that the man now showed remorse. “He stated that he had acted without thinking. He could no longer explain his behavior today.”

After replacing Franz Stuck’s Das Märchen vom Froschkönig (The Fairy Tale of the Frog King) (1891) with a forgery, the man pretended the original was a family heirloom and it was sold at Ketterer Kunst auction house in May 2017 to a Swiss gallery for €70,000 ($74,000). After auction house fees, he received $49,127.40 ($52,000).

Two more paintings that were switched out for fakes, Franz von Defregger’s Zwei Mädchen beim Holzsammeln im Gebirge (Two Girls Gathering Wood in the Mountains) and Eduard von Grützner’s Die Weinprüfung (Tasting the Wine), brought in an additional €11,490.50 ($12,700). An attempt to sell a fourth painting, Franz von Defregger’s Dirndl, at another Munich auction house was unsuccessful. The man made €60,617 ($64,000) in total.

“We have, of course, fulfilled our duty of care in full and have researched the works mentioned extensively,” a spokesperson for Ketterer Kunst told Artnet News. “We regret that the works were stolen from the museum with such high criminal energy. We cooperated closely with the LKA (Bavarian State Criminal Police Office) at an early stage and handed over all documents to solve this case.”

The unnamed German museum is currently trying to arrange for the return of the pictures, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. It apparently has many valuable German paintings languishing in storage thanks to a history of receiving bequests from local foundations and families.

“The defendant shamelessly exploited the opportunity to access the storage rooms in the employer’s buildings and sold valuable cultural assets in order to secure an exclusive standard of living for himself and to show off,” the verdict summarized.

The apparent vulnerability of the museum’s collection to theft while in storage recalls the recent scandal of a senior curator at the British Museum accused of stealing some 1,500 objects, several of which were sold for cheap on eBay. Most of these items had never been catalogued, revealing the complex challenges faced by museums tasked with keeping track of vast holdings.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/german-museum-employee-swapped-paintings-fakes-2367937Jo Lawson-Tancred, September 25, 2023

Hartwig Fischer, British Museum Director resigns after worker fired for theft

Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, in London on Aug. 27, 2020. Just days after the museum announced that it had fired an employee who was suspected of looting its storerooms and selling items on eBay, Fischer announced Friday, Aug. 25, 2023, that he was resigning, effective immediately. (Tom Jamieson/The New York Times) by Alex Marshall

LONDON.- Just days after the British Museum announced that it had fired an employee who was suspected of looting its storerooms and selling items on eBay, the museum’s director announced Friday that he was resigning, effective immediately.

Hartwig Fischer, a German art historian who had led the world-renowned institution since 2016, said in a news release that he was leaving the post at a time “of the utmost seriousness.”

Fischer, 60, said that it was “evident” that under his leadership, the museum did not adequately respond to warnings that a curator may be stealing items. “The responsibility for that failure must ultimately rest with the director,” Fischer said.

A few hours after Fischer’s resignation, the museum announced that its deputy director, Jonathan Williams, had also “agreed to voluntarily step back from his normal duties” until an investigation into the thefts was complete.

Trouble has been brewing at the British Museum since it announced last week that items had been stolen from its collection. The museum did not say how many objects were taken or how valuable they were. But it said that the missing, stolen or damaged pieces included “gold jewelry and “gems of semiprecious stones and glass” dating from as far back as the 15th century B.C.

Ever since, a stream of revelations around the museum’s handling of the thefts undermined Fischer’s position. On Tuesday, The New York Times and the BBC published emails showing that he had downplayed concerns raised by Ittai Gradel, a Denmark-based antiquities dealer, about potential thefts.

In an email to a trustee in October 2022, Fischer said that “the case has been thoroughly investigated,” adding that “there is no evidence to substantiate the allegations.”

Fischer initially defended his response, saying in a statement Wednesday that his handling of the allegations had been robust and that the museum had taken the warnings “incredibly seriously.” The extent of the problem only became clear later, he said, after the museum undertook “a full audit” of its collections.

His defense did little to quell criticism in Britain. On Wednesday, The Times of London wrote that the thefts were “a national disgrace, calling into question the museum’s own claims for its stewardship of cultural treasures, and for which it needs to give a full accounting.”

The unfolding drama was also watched closely in countries that are seeking the return of pieces in the British Museum’s vast collection, which includes more than 8 million items, many from Britain’s former colonies. Lawmakers in Greece and Nigeria used the thefts as an opportunity to call for the return of contested artifacts.

Lina Mendoni, Greece’s culture minister, said in an interview Monday with To Vima, a Greek newspaper, that the case reinforces her country’s demands for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, a series of sculptures and frieze panels, sometimes known as the Elgin marbles, that once decorated the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The thefts raised questions about the “safety and integrity of all of the museum’s exhibits,” Mendoni said.

And Thursday, Nigerian officials reiterated their long-standing call for the British Museum to return a collection of artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes, which British troops looted in 1897.

Fischer’s time at the museum coincided with a sea change in attitudes over what rightfully belongs in the West’s museums, and an increase in the volume and intensity of restitution demands. He took over at the British Museum in 2016, having formerly run the State Art Collections of Dresden, a prestigious collection of museums in Germany.

In late July, shortly before the news broke that the museum had fired a worker suspected of theft, Fischer announced that he would step down from his role next year. But as the crisis at the museum deepened this week, his position looked increasingly untenable.

The turmoil has come at “a very bad moment,” said Charles Saumarez Smith, a former director of the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. The British Museum is expected to announce a major renovation project that The Financial Times has reported will cost 1 billion pounds, or about $1.26 billion, and the current uncertainty could make fundraising much more difficult, he said.

The resignation was “an act of symbolic bloodletting,” Saumarez Smith said, but it may not end the British Museum’s woes. There are clearly “bigger issues that need to be resolved” at the institution, he added, including the questions about whether it has a handle on its inventory.

Fischer said in his statement that he expected the museum to “come through this moment and emerge stronger” but that he had “come to the conclusion that my presence is proving a distraction.”

“That is the last thing I would want,” he said.

George Osborne, the museum chair, said in the release that the board had accepted Fischer’s decision. “I am clear about this: We are going to fix what has gone wrong,” Osborne said. “The museum has a mission that lasts across generations. We will learn, restore confidence and deserve to be admired once again.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
https://artdaily.cc/news/161675/British-Museum-Director-resigns-after-worker-fired-for-theft

British Museum worker fired over missing treasures

The British Museum has sacked a member of staff and imposed “emergency measures” to increase security after it found items from its collection to be missing.

It launched an independent review of security after items including gold jewellery and gems of semi-precious stones and glass dating from the 15th century BC to the 19th century AD were found to be missing, stolen or damaged.

Legal action against the dismissed member of staff will be taken and the matter is also being investigated by the economic crime command of the Metropolitan police.

The museum’s independent review, led by Sir Nigel Boardman, a former trustee, and Lucy D’Orsi, chief constable of the British Transport Police, will investigate and make recommendations on future security arrangements. It will also “kickstart a vigorous programme to recover the missing items”, the museum said.

Most of the missing items were small pieces kept in a storeroom belonging to one of the museum’s collections. None had recently been on public display, and they were kept primarily for academic and research purposes.

George Osborne, chair of the British Museum, said: “The trustees of the British Museum were extremely concerned when we learned earlier this year that items of the collection had been stolen. “The trustees have taken decisive action to deal with the situation, working with the team at the museum. We called in the police, imposed emergency measures to increase security, set up an independent review into what happened and lessons to learn, and used all the disciplinary powers available to us to deal with the individual we believe to be responsible.

“Our priority is now threefold: first, to recover the stolen items; second, to find out what, if anything, could have been done to stop this; and third, to do whatever it takes, with investment in security and collection records, to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“This incident only reinforces the case for the reimagination of the museum we have embarked upon. It’s a sad day for all who love our British Museum, but we’re determined to right the wrongs and use the experience to build a stronger museum.” Hartwig Fischer, the museum’s director, said: “This is a highly unusual incident. I know I speak for all colleagues when I say that we take the safeguarding of all the items in our care extremely seriously.

“The museum apologises for what has happened, but we have now brought an end to this – and we are determined to put things right. “We have already tightened our security arrangements and we are working alongside outside experts to complete a definitive account of what is missing, damaged and stolen. This will allow us to throw our efforts into the recovery of objects.”

Boardman said: “The British Museum has been the victim of theft and we are absolutely determined to use our review in order to get to the bottom of what happened, and ensure lessons are learnt. We are working alongside the Metropolitan police in the interest of criminal justice to support any investigations.

“Furthermore, the recovery programme will work to ensure the stolen items are returned to the museum. It will be a painstaking job, involving internal and external experts, but this is an absolute priority – however long it takes – and we are grateful for the help we have already received.” The British Museum said it would not comment further while the police investigation continued.

A spokesperson for the Met said: “We have been working alongside the British Museum. “There is currently an ongoing investigation – there is no arrest and inquiries continue. We will not be providing any further information at this time.”

It is understood that the museum hopes the review of security will be completed by the end of the year.

Items that have gone missing from the museum in previous years include a number of coins and medals taken in the 1970s, and Roman coins stolen in a 1993 break-in.

In 2002, the museum reviewed security after a 2,500-year-old 12cm-high Greek statue was stolen by a member of the public. Two years later, Chinese j went missing.

In 2017, it was revealed a £750,000 Cartier diamond ring from the heritage asset collection had been reported absent in 2011.

Harriet Sherwood Arts and culture correspondent - Wed 16 Aug 2023 20.37 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/16/british-museum-sacks-staff-member-after-items-vanish-from-collection

Italian Police Have Arrested Suspected Forger Pasquele ‘Lino’ Frongia for Allegedly Faking Paintings by Franz Hals, El Greco, and Others

The forgery ring is believed to have been masterminded by French collector Giuliano Ruffini.
Sarah Cascone, June 28, 2023

Lino Frongia. Photo ©Lino Frongia.

Once again, Italian authorities have arrested Pasquale “Lino” Frongia, the artist suspected of forging a string of Old Master paintings that have appeared at high-profile museums and made millions at auctions by passing as the work of Frans Hals, Orazio Gentileschi, Diego Velázquez, El Greco, and Parmigianino, among others.

The 65-year-old painter was first apprehended in 2019, under a warrant from French judge Aude Burési, who is investigating the forgery ring believed to have been masterminded by Giuliano Ruffini, a French art collector. But the court in Bologna declined to extradite Frongia, citing inconsistent charges. After Burési issued a new European warrant, police arrested Frongia in Emilia, according to the Art Newspaper.

The long-running investigation into the fake Old Masters first made headlines in 2016, when authorities raided an exhibition featuring the collection of the prince of Lichtenstein on view at the Caumont Centre d’Art in Aix-en-Provence. They seized the centerpiece of the show, a stunning painting of Venus believed to be by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Soon, more paintings began to fall under suspicion, all linked to one name: Ruffini. Rumors had been circulating about his ties to forgeries for years—Italian police had even raided his home prior to the Cranach seizure—and now, one by one, the individual works are being flagged as fakes.

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus (1531).
The painting is now believed to be a fake. ©Liechtenstein. The Princely Collections, Vaduz–Vienna.
In his defense, Ruffini has both denied the forensic analysis identifying the works as contemporary fakes, and insisted that he never claimed that any of the paintings were authentic Old Masters—the attributions to some of art history’s biggest names were first raised by the experts, not him.

Last November, Ruffini was reportedly on the run; police arrested him the following month and extradited him to France. He is currently under house arrest, facing charges of gang fraud, forgery, and money laundering.

The collector’s son, Mathieu Ruffini, is also suspected of being involved. Financial records show that the younger Ruffini made several payments to Frongia, including a $740,000 wire transfer in 2007. He was charged with money laundering and is out on bail.


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/italian-police-arrest-suspected-old-master-forger-2328903