A unique collection of art went on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London yesterday — all of it fake.
More than 100 forged paintings and sculptures seized by the capital’s Metropolitan Police are on show for the first time, including fake antiquities and works attributed to Giacometti and contemporary British artist Banksy.
If they were real, the collection would be worth more than £4 million (US$6.5 million), organizers said.
Many of the items come from the workshop of the most diverse art forger ever known. Shaun Greenhalgh was jailed for four years and eight months in 2007, but not before he produced an astonishing array of fakes in multiple disciplines.
One of his most notorious works is the Amarna Princess, which was bought by a museum in Bolton, northern England, for £400,000. It thought it was a rare piece from the era of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten.
The forger also imitated paintings by the English painter L.S. Lowry, as well as Roman vessels and medieval jewelry.
“Greenhalgh was probably the most diverse art forger that we have never heard of,” said Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Art and Antiques Unit, which has put on the exhibition.
“He created objects of so many different styles and from so many periods that he was not really detected,” Rapley said, noting that he worked for 17 years without being caught.
The forgers featured in the exhibition often certificates of authenticity signed by experts to help sell their works, some of which are on display alongside the items themselves.
Others, such as brothers Robert and Brian Thwaites, even went so far as to stick bits of newspaper from the Victorian era behind fake paintings attributed to an artist of that period, John Anster Fitzgerald.
The “Metropolitan Police Service’s Investigation of Fakes and Forgeries” runs until Feb. 7.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese