at the center of arguably the greatest controversy of the museum’s history. Shortly after starting in his position in 1994, Turner made the astounding declaration that six major drawings attributed to Renaissance Masters were forgeries. They included a pen-and-ink drawing of a woman attributed to Raphael, a portrait of an infant attributed to Fra Bartolommeo, and several other pieces, some attributed and some not. Turner was appalled by the apparent clumsiness in the works, which to his trained eye screamed forgery. One example was a Desiderio da Settignano, which the Getty had just bought for $349,000. A figure on the bottom of the Desiderio turned out to be identical to the figure on the left edge—but in reverse. Mixing and matching elements from different compositions by the same artist is one typical forger’s ploy.
Indeed, a supposed Fra Bartolommeo drawing, a black-chalk study of an infant’s head, had caught Turner’s eye as being the near replica-in-reverse of a study in a German museum—same child, same artist. The baby used to face right; now the baby faced left.
After Turner raised the alarm, Ari Wallert, an associate scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, examined a supposed Raphael with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and found that it contained titanium oxide, which was not in existence at the time. Turner believed that this was proof of fakery. But just as Turner was about to pursue the matter, Getty shut him down. What ensued was a very messy and bitter affair that culminated in Turner’s dismissal. As part of his severance, he was paid a substantial amount of money to waive any disputes with the museum, including his assertion that his predecessor had purchased forgeries. He was not content, however, to walk away, and he sued again. To allow known forgeries to stand was an insult to the conscience of a curator.
In a lengthy article about the claims in the New York Times Magazine in 2001, Peter Landesman hit the nail on the head when he wrote,
We want to walk into a museum and know that what we find there is real. “Museums act as a guarantee of the authenticity of what’s on display, but the sources of authenticity are decreasing,” [Mark] Jones [head curator of the British Museum’s “Fake?” exhibition] says. “People are more geographically mobile than their parents were. The past is some sort of fiction. The loss of certainty about what is and what is not real, and the increasing fictionalization of the past, means that museums have found themselves acting as psychic anchors. . . . But the knowledge that we don’t always know what is real—and neither, always, do museums—infects us with doubts that corrupt all of our other dealings with the culturally sacred. Experts are fallible. We have to take responsibility for what we look at. “If a museum contains things which are inauthentic,” Jones says, “then what it is saying becomes a lie.” 5
In subsequent years, Turner did not give up on his quest. His primary suspect was a man named Eric Hebborn, a brilliant forger of Old Masters who actually revealed all in the 1980s. Hebborn never admitted to the Getty forgeries, but he did brazenly acknowledge his role as a forger in general in 2004 in a book— The Art Forger’s Handbook —in which he boasted of his methods and philosophy. He had a particularly bold explanation for his actions:
There is nothing criminal in making a drawing in any style one wishes, nor is there anything criminal about asking an expert what he thinks of it. “But what about gaining pecuniary advantages by deception?” My answer to this is that I can see no reason why I should give my work away. Furthermore, I can truly claim never to have asked or received sums of money for my Old Masters in excess of what an artist of my reputation can command for his own work.
The pecuniary advantages were gained by the dealers, and for this reason I object to being considered a criminal. However much some
Indeed, a supposed Fra Bartolommeo drawing, a black-chalk study of an infant’s head, had caught Turner’s eye as being the near replica-in-reverse of a study in a German museum—same child, same artist. The baby used to face right; now the baby faced left.
After Turner raised the alarm, Ari Wallert, an associate scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, examined a supposed Raphael with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and found that it contained titanium oxide, which was not in existence at the time. Turner believed that this was proof of fakery. But just as Turner was about to pursue the matter, Getty shut him down. What ensued was a very messy and bitter affair that culminated in Turner’s dismissal. As part of his severance, he was paid a substantial amount of money to waive any disputes with the museum, including his assertion that his predecessor had purchased forgeries. He was not content, however, to walk away, and he sued again. To allow known forgeries to stand was an insult to the conscience of a curator.
In a lengthy article about the claims in the New York Times Magazine in 2001, Peter Landesman hit the nail on the head when he wrote,
We want to walk into a museum and know that what we find there is real. “Museums act as a guarantee of the authenticity of what’s on display, but the sources of authenticity are decreasing,” [Mark] Jones [head curator of the British Museum’s “Fake?” exhibition] says. “People are more geographically mobile than their parents were. The past is some sort of fiction. The loss of certainty about what is and what is not real, and the increasing fictionalization of the past, means that museums have found themselves acting as psychic anchors. . . . But the knowledge that we don’t always know what is real—and neither, always, do museums—infects us with doubts that corrupt all of our other dealings with the culturally sacred. Experts are fallible. We have to take responsibility for what we look at. “If a museum contains things which are inauthentic,” Jones says, “then what it is saying becomes a lie.” 5
In subsequent years, Turner did not give up on his quest. His primary suspect was a man named Eric Hebborn, a brilliant forger of Old Masters who actually revealed all in the 1980s. Hebborn never admitted to the Getty forgeries, but he did brazenly acknowledge his role as a forger in general in 2004 in a book— The Art Forger’s Handbook —in which he boasted of his methods and philosophy. He had a particularly bold explanation for his actions:
There is nothing criminal in making a drawing in any style one wishes, nor is there anything criminal about asking an expert what he thinks of it. “But what about gaining pecuniary advantages by deception?” My answer to this is that I can see no reason why I should give my work away. Furthermore, I can truly claim never to have asked or received sums of money for my Old Masters in excess of what an artist of my reputation can command for his own work.
The pecuniary advantages were gained by the dealers, and for this reason I object to being considered a criminal. However much some
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