FAKE!
We know that fake art has existed for as long as art has been traded on the market. In the exhibition “FAKE!” from the Norwegian Museum of Justice, artworks from a wide range of fraud cases handled by the legal system—from the early 1900s up until today—are presented.
In the exhibition, works by well-known artists such as Munch, Zorn, and Grimdalen are presented. That is to say, there appears to be art by these and several more or less famous artists in the Justice Museum’s collection. How did these artworks end up in the collection of a museum dedicated to “law and justice,” and are they actually artworks at all?
This exhibition looks back in time. What the future will bring is something we can only speculate about—will it still be possible to distinguish between “genuine” and “fake” art? And how can artists protect their rights and intellectual property in a future where technology develops faster than lawmakers can spell “artificial intelligence”?
In the exhibition “FAKE!” from the Justice Museum, art from a wide range of fraud cases handled by the legal system—from the early 1900s up until today—is presented. In the most recent case, the verdict was handed down as late as 2023. Despite strict penalties, many have tried their luck, and the forgery of art is considered, in legal terms, a form of fraud.