The Visual & Material Forum is delighted to invite you to the first talk in our 2020-21 programme, and to welcome Dr Saskia Hufnagel (QMUL, Law), speaking on the topic

‘From Fortunes to Fakes: The Legal History of Copies and Forgeries’

on Wednesday, 28th October, 4-5pm

The talk is free and will be held online via MS Teams. Please register to receive the Teams link via this form: https://forms.gle/MjYEnGXNwH4G9YWF6

Abstract:

In the past years Europe has experienced a number of prominent art crime cases ranging from forgeries to the discovery of art treasures believed to have been lost forever. Art crime has therefore been very prominent in the media and on the policing agendas. This presentation gives a brief overview of art fraud cases in history – some more, others less well known. The cases are examined with a view to the policing techniques and efforts necessary to detect and prosecute them, the resulting sentences and the correlation between efforts and results. Forgers investigated include Abraham Wolfgang Küfner (1500), as the earliest known German ‘forger’, up to recent scandals such as the Beltracchi Case, the ‘Count of Waldstein’ Case, and the Case of the forged ‘Russian Avant-garde’. All forgers portrayed here caused, to greater or lesser extent, damage to buyers, experts, galleries and the reputation of the art market more generally. However, some of the most damaging cases are already forgotten while others are still very prominent in the public mind. This presentation investigates what determined the impact of an art fraud case and how this affects future prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of art crime. 

For MS Teams: For the best experience use the most recent version of the Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge browsers.  Safari is supported but will not allow you to share your camera.  Firefox, Internet Explorer and other browsers are not supported and will prompt you to install the app. Click here to download and install the Teams app for your device.