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Abstract
What can the institutional practices of libraries and museums tell us about the ways in which our culture conceives of knowledge and aesthetics? How might their architectures, and our navigation of them, map upon the distinctions we make in our minds, dividing real from fake, legitimate from illegitimate, art from fact? This article lays out the conceptual and spatial constructs that are the Library and the Museum, detailing how even trivial norms within them uphold crucial philosophical distinctions, for example, surrounding authorship and authenticity. It then examines two recent cases of forgery in order to reveal how and why thinking across the thresholds of these distinctions, tenuous as they are, can provoke moral and legal consequences.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This article is dedicated to Patricia Morris (Paddock Music Library, Dartmouth College) and Julia McCarthy (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), my mentors in the artful rules of the library and the museum. I am indebted to Joan Kee, Daniel Jütte, and Nasser Zakariya for their incisive critiques of early drafts. Versions of this article were delivered at the Warburg Institute and the Comparative Media Workshop at Columbia University in 2020. I am most grateful to the hosts and participants for their criticisms, provocations, and stories, as I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of Law and Literature for their comments.
2 Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” in Labyrinths, trans. James E. Irby, ed. J. Irby and D. Yates (New York: New Directions Publishing, 1962), 85–86.
3 The State of Pennsylvania’s Archives, Library, and Museum Protection Act was signed into law on April 27, 1982. James Shinn was convicted of other charges. Atlas Obscura, “The Rare-Book Thief Who Looted College Libraries in the ‘80s,” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/james-shinn-book-thief.
4 In such matters I am thinking of the New York gallery True Fakes Ltd., which sold copies of New York museum collection works painted by hired art students. According to its owner, this gallery operated between 1990 to 1995 and adhered to a strict and lengthy set of guidelines, as advised by several attorneys. (Interview with author, 2008).
5 Consider the case of the Musée Terrus (“‘They Didn’t Look Old Enough’: Who Filled a French Art Gallery with Fakes,” The Guardian, June 15, 2019). Also consider the 2019 charges against six individuals, including a curator, who exhibited 21 Modigliani paintings in the Grand Palazao Ducale in Genoa, Italy. The police were “tipped off” by a Modigliani art expert Carlo Pepi. Following an inquiry that determined that 20 of the paintings were forgeries, the museum was required to refund ticket payments to visitors. (“Italian Police May Have Solved the Mystery of Who Was behind an Exhibition of FAKE MODIGLIANI PAINTINGS in Genoa,” Artnews, March 14, 2019.) Carlo Pepi, http://www.modigliani1909.com/scandal-modigliani-fake-show-genoa-italy.html.
6 Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1968).
7 Umberto Eco, “Between La Mancha and Babel,” trans. editorial board, Variaciones Borges, 4 (1997): 51–62.
8 Kirk Pillow, “Did Goodman’s Distinction Survive LeWitt?”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 61, no. 4 (Autumn 2003): 365–80.
9 Mandelbrote, Giles and Barry Taylor, eds. Libraries within the Library: The Origins of the British Library’s Printed Collections (London: British Library, 2009).
10 Walter Benjamin, “Chinese Paintings at the National Library” (1937), trans. Briankle G. Chang, Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 26, no. 1 (February 2018): 185–92.
11 Associated Press, Louise Watt, “University Librarian in China Admits He Replaced Famed Artworks with Fakes for Years,” July 21, 2015, https://apnews.com/f9989d2800d94828b9a1283442fa791f.
12 Cassie Lin and Louis Berney, “Over 1000 Paintings in GAFA’s Library Were Switched by Former Chief Librarian,” Life of Guangzhou, undated. Sarah Casone, “Master Forger Librarian Swaps 143 Artworks with his own,” Artnet, July 21, 2015.
13 Guangzhou People's Intermediate Court. The video is no longer hosted on the court’s website.
14 Joan Stanley-Baker, Old Masters Repainted: Wu Zhen, 1280-1354: Prime Objects and Accretions (Hong Kong University Press, 1995). Joan Stanley-Baker, “Repainting Wang Meng: Problems in Accretion,” Artibus Asiae 50, no. 3/4 (1990): 161–231.
15 Howard Becker, Art Worlds (University of California Press, 2008), 12.
16 Paul Needham, “Final Thoughts,” in Galileo’s O, Vol III: A Galileo Forgery, Unmasking the New York Sidereus Nuncius, ed. Horst Bredekamp, Irene Brückle, and Paul Needham (De Gruyter, 2014), 98.
17 Horst Bredekamp, ed., Galileo’s O, vols. 1–4 (De Gruyter, 2011–2015).
18 William Shea and Horst Bredekamp announced their authentication at a press conference in Padua in 2007 (Nick Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 160, no. 1 (March 2016): 41. Nicholas Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book”, The New Yorker, December 16, 2013).
19 Horst Bredekamp, Galilei der Kunstler: Die Zeichnung, der Mond, die Sonne (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2007).
20 In 2009, revising his earlier opinion of the SNML, Owen Gingerich argued that the drawings were not accurate observations of the moon (Owen Gingerich, “The Curious Case of the M-L Sidereus Nuncius,” Galilaeana 6 (2009): 141–66.).
21 Horst Bredekamp, Irene Brückle, and Paul Needham, eds. Galileo’s O, Vol III: A Galileo Forgery, Unmasking the New York Sidereus Nuncius (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).
22 Nick Wilding, “Galileo’s O, edited by Horst Bredekamp,” Renaissance Quarterly 65, no. 1 (March 2012): 217–18. Nick Wilding, “Letter to the Editor,” Isis 103, no. 4 (December 2012): 760. Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book”.
23 Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.” Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” 37–38, 45–46.
24 Major Antonia Coppola, quoted in BBC News Magazine, “Naples’ Girolamini: The Looting of a 16th Century Library,” December 19, 2013.
25 International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, “De Caro and the Girolamini Thefts”, February 12, 2015, https://ilab.org/articles/de-caro-and-girolamini-thefts-germany-returns-books-seized-munich-auction-house-may-2012
26 Schmidle, “A Very Rare Book.”
27 “Rare Books Vanish, with a Librarian in the Plot,” New York Times, November 29, 2013.
28 Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” 37–72.
29 Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” 57–9. Schmidle reports that De Caro received three Galileo titles.
30 Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” 58. Schmidle’s profile in the New Yorker implies that De Caro did not deny that this exchange happened.
31 He escaped to Lebanon briefly and was extradited. He is currently serving several prison sentences.
32 “Naples’ Girolamini: The Looting of a 16th Century Library”, BBC News Magazine, December 19, 2013.
33 In 2020, a Gustav Klimt painting stolen in 1997 was discovered, hidden in the outer walls of the Museum to which it belonged, the Galleria d’Arte Moderna Ricci Oddi in Piacenza. It remains unclear if the stolen painting ever left the museum grounds. “Experts Confirm the Authenticity of the Stolen Klimt Painting Found Hidden in a Museum’s Wall,” Art News, January 20, 2020.
34 That is, the Mona Lisa theft of 1911, and the thefts at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990.
35 For example, The Thomas Crowne Affair (1999); Maiden Heist (2009); Ocean’s 8 (2018).
36 Issues of Authenticity in Chinese Painting (Metropolitan Museum, 1999), ed. Denis Dutton, The Forger’s Art, 1983. The Getty Kouros Colloquium (Greece: Kapon Editions), 1993.
37 Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery (documentary: Arne Birkenstock, 2014).
38 Hope B. Werness, “Han van Meegeren fecit,” The Forger’s Art, ed. D. Dutton (University of California Press, 1983), 1–57.
39 Werness, “Han van Meegeren fecit.”
40 Abraham Bredius, “A New Vermeer”, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 71, no. 416 (November 1937): 210–11.
41 The Han van Meegeren case and its philosophical implications are chronicled and explored in a volume, The Forger’s Art, edited by Denis Dutton. The volume includes an essay by Nelson Goodman.
42 The historiography of this pursuit is discussed in Melinda Schlitt, “Galileo’s Moon, Drawing as Rationalized Observation and its Failure as Forgery,” Open Inquiry Archive 5, no. 2 (2016).
43 Horst Bredekamp, “Gazing Hands and Blind Spots: Galileo as Draftsman,” Science in Context, 2000.
44 See Michael Cole’s review of Bredekamp’s Galilei der Kunstler, in which he advises readers to “decide for themselves” with respect to the “proof copy” and Galileo’s “signature,” while also concluding that he had not encountered “a more original and inspiring book on the entwined early histories of art and science in years.” (Michael Cole, “Galilei der Kunstler: Die Zeichnung, der Mond, die Sonne, by Horst Bredekamp,” The Art Bulletin 91, no. 3 (September 2009): 381–4. See also Eileen Reeves’ review which concluded: “…the embarrassment of riches must be distinguished from the question of the authenticity of the proof copy.” (Eileen Reeves, review: Galileo’s O, Isis 103, no. 3 (2012): 583–4).
45 Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” 62–63, 71. Schmidle describes De Caro’s colorful story of how the watercolors were produced by a conservator, tracing a wine glass, in Buenos Aires.
46 Needham, Bredekamp and Brückle, “Final Thoughts,” in A Galileo Forgery: Unmasking the New York Sidereus Nuncius, Galileos O vol 3 (Degruyter 2014), 95–102.
47 Needham, “Final Thoughts,” 95–102; Following his public recognition of his misattribution, Bredekamp reissued Galelei der Kunstler, as the fourth volume of Galileo’s O. cf. Horst Bredekamp, Galileis denkende Hand: Form und Forschung um 1600 (De Gruyter, 2015). In a new preface in the German edition, he noted the echoes in his experience with that of Abraham Bredius, and even revealed he had received correspondence from de Caro, suggesting that de Caro had indeed set out to fool him, Bredekamp, in particular (7–9). This preface is not included in the English translation of the book, Galileo’s Thinking Hand: Mannerism, Anti-Mannerism and the Virtue of Drawing in the Foundation of Early Modern Science, trans. Cohen Mitch (De Gruyter, 2019).
48 Wilding, “Forging the Moon,” 43. Yet it is interesting how Bredekamp, after accepting the forgery, can read a different, and directly opposite set of intentions in the mind of the forger. Horst Bredekamp, “Towards a psychology of the forger,” in A Galileo Forgery: Unmasking the New York Sidereus Nuncius, Galileo’s O, vol. 3 (De Gruyter, 2014), 89–93.
49 Eileen Reeves had discussed a sheet of watercolor sketches that are drawings of the Moon by Galileo are housed in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale de Firenze. (Eileen Reeves, “Kingdoms of Heaven: Galileo and Sarpi on the Celestial,” Representations (2009): 61–84. See also, Schlitt, “Galileo’s Moon.”
50 My question is rhetorical, for I acknowledge that in fact many librarians, registrars, and curators, maintain such special “shelves” in their offices.
51 Alfred Lessing, “What is Wrong with a Forgery?,” in The Forger’s Art, ed. Denis Dutton (University of California Press, 1983), 58–76.
52 Leonard B. Meyer, “Forger and the Anthropology of Art,” The Forger’s Art, ed. Denis Dutton (University of California Press, 1983), 58–76, 77–92.
53 “Rare Books Vanish, with a Librarian in the Plot,” New York Times, November 29, 2013.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Winnie Wong
Winnie Wong is a historian of modern and contemporary art and visual culture, with a special interest in fakes, forgeries, frauds, copies, counterfeits, and other non-art challenges to authorship and originality. Her research is based in the southern Chinese cities of Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and her writing engages with Chinese and Western aesthetics, anthropology, intellectual property law, and popular culture. She is the author of Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade (University of Chicago Press, 2014), which was awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize in 2015. Winnie Wong was a Senior Fellow at Dartmouth College, and received her SMArchS and PhD in History, Theory and Criticism from MIT. She was elected a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows. She is currently associate professor of Rhetoric and History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley.