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The FBI Art Crime Team is published on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s website and is kept current with the latest news update from Oct 20, 2022. The website boasts the team’s training and achievements and features news; art crime discovery advise; the National Stolen Art File, which is the online database of stolen art and cultural property; FBI Top Ten Art Crimes; and other law enforcement links and resources. The FBI Art Theft site itself is small and all links are laid out in organized manner geared towards for art stake holders, as resources are provided for them and anyone interested in the FBI Art Crime Team. This reference provides an understanding on who would investigate art forgeries in the US. I found this through a Google search of “FBI art crime” and I think this is a more direct route to their website as getting to the page via the FBI home page isn’t intuitive since this falls under violent crimes.

“Art Theft.” FBI, FBI, 3 May 2016, https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/violent-crime/art-theft.

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From their website, “Art Experts is American fine art authentication and appraisal practice founded in 2002... [consisting] of highly educated art historians and authentication experts located in the US, Canada, the UK, Europe and Asia” They advertise services of authentication, appraisal, and certification of all kinds of artwork and will sell or assist in selling an artist’s work. This is a large website which includes Art Experts’ services, clients, FAQ, About us, processes, selling procedures, and a great deal more. It is actually overwhelming with how much information is provided but easily understood and navigable with information as accurate as testimonials and press can vouch for and a copyright of 2022. The intended audience are artists, buyers, sellers, collectors, and institutions, but this is a good resource to highlight the extent people ensure their work is not a forgery and the practices that forgers have to beat to sell their art. I found this this website via a Google search of “authenticate art.”

“Do You Have a Genuine Painting, Drawing, Print or Sculpture by a Famous Artist? and How Much Is It Worth?” Art Expert, Art Appraisal Services | Art Experts Inc, 2022, https://www.artexpertswebsite.com/.

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This is the promotional website for the 2014 exhibit titled “Intent to Deceive: Fakes and Forgeries in the Art World”. The exhibit featured works by known forgers Han van Meegren, Elmyr de Hory, Eric Hebborn, John Myatt, and Mark Landis, and the website hosts a digital collection of the featured work. The website is published by International Arts & Artists, which is a nonprofit arts service organization dedicated to promoting cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally, and was last updated seemingly in Feb 2015 after the exhibit completed its tour schedule. The website contains profiles of forgers; the gallery of all the work presented in the exhibit; an about page which offers why this exhibit was created, the importance of this work, acknowledgements to the curating and exhibit teams and lenders; videos associated with the exhibit; tour schedule of places and dates to view the exhibit; and, finally, news and resources pertaining to the exhibit. Intent to Deceive is a unique online gallery specific to art forgeries, which treats these pieces as art pieces instead of crimes and is a singular place for purposeful viewing of art forgeries. Overall, this is not a huge website; it is a simple promotional website with an ever-present links bar. Each page has more links that are clearly labelled and relevant to that particular page, such as a video of Mark Landis on Landis’s profile page. I found this exhibit website through Mark Landis’s website.

Loll, Colette, curator. “Fakes and Forgeries in the Art World.” Intent to Deceive, INTERNATIONAL ARTS & ARTISTS, 2014, https://www.artsandartists.org/exhibitions/intent-to-deceive/

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Maintained by Mark Landis’s friends, with no specific one mentioned, the website for Mark Landis tells who he is, his abilities, where he is featured in, his works, and how to contact him. Mark Landis is an art forger who was never investigated as all his works in museums, institutions, and other collections were donated. The FBI is aware of him, but he has committed no crime as “no money changed hands.” The website is organized with a top screen bar that is on every page featuring home, biography, portfolio, Exhibits and film, Commission an original, press, NAMI, and contact. Each page gives clear information relevant to the topic it falls under, such as NAMI has only information dealing with Landis’s involvement with National Alliance on Mental Illness and what NAMI is. This site seems to be last updated in 2015 though the “commission an original” and contact page are still viable. The Mark Landis website is sympathetic toward Landis as it is a platform for selling his own artwork and promoting associated media. The audience for this website would most probably art enthusiasts and collectors, but I include this website to provide another example of an art forger’s account and to better demonstrate that simply creating art work in the style of another artist is not a crime. This website is featured in the show notes for the Mark Landis episode of the Wise Fool Art Podcast, which I found by searching Stitcher.com for “art forgery.”

“Mark Landis Original Site.” Mark Landis Original, WideHorizonMedia.com, 2014, https://marklandisoriginal.com/.

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This is The Wise Fool Art Podcast’s episode of an interview with David Henty, British art forger and copyright artist. As the description states, Matthew Dols (host) and Henty discuss “... the value of a signature, cult of personality, branding, marketing, creating a buzz, the important of knowing your worth, and knowing your market.“ The episode is one hour and 37 minutes and was posted on Jul 29, 2021. Henty’s interview provides a forger’s insight of how they value their work and tells where he is now career-wise and no longer producing forgeries. Listeners will probably active podcast listeners and art enthusiasts, since finding this episode included doing a keyword search of “art forgery” on Stitcher.com, a podcast streaming website.

Dols, Matthew, host. “Art Forger, David Henty (UK).” The Wise Fool Art Podcast, 29 July 2021. http://wisefoolpod.com/art-forger-david-henty-uk/

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The Art Fraud Podcast is about America’s largest art fraud that was committed by the Knoedler Gallery’s former director, Ann Freedman, and an art forger, Glafira Rosales, which spanned 17 years. This podcast is  Written by VANITY FAIR reporter Michael Shnayerson and hosted by Alec Baldwin, who is also an executive producer and has a personal experience with art fraud. There are eight episodes, each approximately 40 minutes long and explaining different aspects of this scandal, such as how Anne Freedman became the Knoedler’s director, Glafira Rosales’s only public interview, and the De Sole et al v. Knoedler Gallery, LLC court case. While the audience will most likely be podcast listeners that are art enthusiasts or have a true crime obsession, the listener need have no knowledge as this podcast starts from the beginning and builds the story through the episodes. Art Fraud gives insight as to how long scandals can take to come to light and the risks associated to both calling out a fake and trying to pass off a fake as the real thing. This is an early 2022 series that presents as more historical, and tries to present all components in a neutral means and information can be verified through previously published news articles and court transcripts. Art Fraud can be found wherever podcasts are streamed or hosted by searching “art fraud.”

Baldwin, Alec, host. Art Fraud, IHeartRadio, 01 Feb. 2022. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/art-fraud-91404660/

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The 12-Hour Art Expert: Everything You Need to Know about Art in a Dozen Masterpieces is a crash course of the critical eras in art history discussed in reference to 12 masterpieces of the western world, which is broken down for a general audience with little to no knowledge about art and art history. This is Noah Charney’s latest book; published in Oct 2022 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This handbook has a list of mentioned  artworks,12 chapters centered around one masterpiece, notes on sources, and an index. I included this book because, in order to understand what forgers are imitating, the reader can gain a basic understanding of the importance of artworks and history that the art world is most concerned with. This was recommended on Amazon based on a previous Noah Charney book viewing.

Charney, Noah. The 12-Hour Art Expert: Everything You Need to Know about Art in a Dozen Masterpieces. Rowman & Littlefield , 2022.

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William Casement wrote The Many Faces of Art Forgery: From the Dark Side to Shades of Gray, which is a more clinical view of art forgery than other general art forgery histories. This is a denser text on what constitutes as forgery and the ethical, economical, societal, and historical issues with forgery and is published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in Feb 2022. The Many Faces of Art Forgery  is an overall coverage on everything art forgery with no deep dive on any particular aspect, which includes and introduction, four parts broken into art forgery history, what constitutes as art forgery, ethics of forgery, and the general impact of art forgery, and has an index. Readers will find this to be cut and dry with regards to general aspects of art forgery; more of a one stop shop for an audience that could know nothing. I found this on NoveList by searching “art forgery.”

Casement, William. The Many Faces of Art Forgery: From the Dark Side to Shades of Gray. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.

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Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age is written by Jonathon Keats, f an “American conceptual artist and experimental philosopher known for creating large-scale thought experiments” (from GoodReads), and published by Oxford University Press in Jan 2013. It is nonfiction discusses the societal value on art forgery through the lenses of art criticism and various biographies from mid 19th century up to the present. A reader looking for a non-standard opinion on the history of art forgery with lesser known forgers would find this book to cast a more favorable light on a typically frowned upon subject. It has a table of contents, three parts with part one about the history of art forgery, part two broken up into biographies of 6 “modern masters”, and part three advocating about why forgery is an actual art. I found this alternate opinion on how art forgery shouldn’t be written off as a crime, but celebrated as another means of art mastery on NoveList as I was searching for “art forgery.”

Keats, Jonathon. Forged: Why Fakes Are the Great Art of Our Age. Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger is autobiography of Ken Perenyi, a self-taught artist and art forger, detailing his 30 year criminal career. Perenyi was never caught and expresses little to no remorse for selling forged painting. This is published by Pegasus Books in Aug 2012 and includes an introduction, 13 chapters moving chronologically through Perenyi’s life, and a postscript. This confession of uncaught forger comes after the statute of limitations had passed. Caveat Emptor focuses on the artist’s experiences but the audience should have some general knowledge of particular art forgers, artists, masterpieces, and art techniques. I found this on Amazon through recommendations based on A Forger’s Tale.

Perenyi, Ken. Caveat Emptor: the Secret Life of an American Art Forge. Pegasus Books, 2013.

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A Forger's Tale: The memoir of one of Britain’s most successful and infamous art forgers is a personal account of how and why British forger Shaun Greenhalgh committed art forgery. It is mainly written during his time in prison and provides  perspective of art forgery as told by the forger with emphasis on certain works he created. The book has an introduction and preface, 10 chapters, a postscript, glossary, and pictures, but it is not intuitive to navigate as the timeline jumps around and is more organized by events connected by author’s reasoning. It is published by Allen and Unwin in May 2017 for an audience with some general knowledge of particular art forgers, artists, masterpieces, and art techniques. A reader would gain insight of why and how an art forger chooses to commit art crime and the various talents that a forger has to have to create such a varied portfolio of work from reading this. I found this by searching NoveList for “art forgery.”

Greenhalgh, Shaun. A Forger's Tale: The Memoir of One of Britain's Most Successsful and Infamous Art Forgers. Atlantic Books, 2017.

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Stefan Koldehoff and Tobias Timm write about the many ways art is used in crimes such as smuggling, forgery, ransom, and money laundering, and gives different analysis on who benefits from each crime and what can be done to deter or prevent these crimes in Art and Crime: The Fight Against Looters, Forgers, and Fraudsters In the High-Stakes Art World (translated by Paul David Young). Published in Jan 2022 by Seven Stories Press, an introduction, seven chapters, bibliographical references and index are included, with each chapter delving into specific specific art crimes and their perpetrators. While this is more general to art crime, which includes art forgery, this book provides an economic and cultural impact explanation of these crimes that can give a better understanding of why the art industry is so lucrative to risk committing art crimes. I found this book through Amazon recommendations based on viewing The Art of the Con.

Koldehoff, Stefan, and Tobias Timm. Art and Crime. Seven Stories Press, 2022.

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The Art of the Con: the Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World, written by the Director of Security and Chief Investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Anthony M. Amore, focuses on lesser known contemporary scams involving art forgery by confidence men. It was published by Palgrave Macmillan Trade in Jul 2015 and includes an introduction, 11 chapters specific to different cons, an epilogue, notes, bibliography, and index. This is a deeper dive on specific cotemporary art forgery scams and the reader should be familiar with the some notable art forgeries for reference. The Art of the Con could expand the general knowledge of the reader because discusses cases outside of the “top forgery scandals” that most general history books provide. I found this on Good reads as it was recommended after viewing The Art of Forgery. 

Amore, Anthony M. The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World. Griffin, 2015.

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The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgers is a nonfiction, art history, and art forgery book providing analysis of the motivation of individuals who commit art forgeries, which is examined through notable art fraud cases and each chapter is dedicated to a different a motivation all leading to a final conclusion of why art fraud and forgery is committed. It is written by Noah Charney, whose biography from Good Reads reads, “[he] holds degrees in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and Cambridge University. He is the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), the first international think tank on art crime.” Phaidon Press published this in May 2015 and it includes an introduction, 9 chapters, notes, glossary of scientific methods of authentications, bibliography, index. This book is easy to navigate with each forgery motivation stated in the table of contents and follow-on information available at the end of the book for uninterrupted analysis. The Art of Forgery provides wave top information about multiple art forgers without delving too deep, which makes this a good starting point for the general history of art forgery. I found this on NoveList Plus by key word searching “art forgery.”

Charney, Noah. The Art of Forgery: The Minds, Motives and Methods of Master Forgers. Phaidon, 2015.

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702 LIS Reference Subject Guide

This reference subject guide focuses on Art Forgery and is a general resource for those without any particular education in art or associated crime to get a better understanding of the conversations surrounding art forgery and art crime. Though art forgery is not a crime, this WILL NOT teach how to commit art forgery. The specific breakdown of references provided include general overview or history to art forgery, art authentication and law enforcement, art forgers, and America’s largest art fraud - Knoedler Gallery scandal.