BlogBack: George Shackelford on the Faux Faun

George T.M. Shackelford, chair of European art and modern art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, responds to Chicago’s Faux “Faun” Inspires Faux Journalism:
There seems to be no question that the Chicago “Faun” formerly attributed to Paul Gauguin is a forgery; but please understand that it is a brilliant forgery. It convinced not only the Chicago curators (who are so very far from having made fools of themselves that I think you might owe them an apology for that witticism).
It also convinced all of the attendees at the two-day scholars’ event on the Van Gogh/Gauguin exhibition held at its close in early 2002, which included all of the people that you would expect to know most about the artist. Indeed, I suspect the whole world would have been none the wiser (including every journalist who has written on the subject) had the Greenhalghs’ other forgeries not come to light.