Fakes, the Boxed Wines of the Art World

Art fraud is a lot more common than you might think.

That glass of fine wine you’re enjoying so much.. What if you were told it came from a box? Would it taste different?

According to art fraud investigator Colette Loll, yes, it would. Colette draws on brain science to explain why it’s so easy to be duped by a forged masterpiece, and why even the experts get it wrong sometimes.

https://npg.si.edu/podcasts/fakes

 

Fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls determined to be forgeries

Researchers have been working for months to determine if a collection of fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls on display at a private museum in Washington, DC, were fakes or the real deal. The verdict is in: They’re forgeries. The World’s host Marco Werman speaks to Colette Loll of Art Fraud Insights, who compiled the report.

Dead Sea Scrolls: From Deception to Discovery, October, 2020

 

The Museum of the Bible installed and opened The Dead Sea Scrolls; From Discovery to Deception in its main History of the Bible gallery in October 2020. Several of the now confirmed inauthentic scroll fragments are on view, along with contextual and didactic labels. The key thematic takeaways include a history of the original discovery, the role of scholars and science in the detection of forgeries, and a major mea culpa on behalf of the museum, which is unusual for the field.

The introduction to the exhibit starts with:
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was one of the most spectacular archaeological  finds of the 20th century. It generated vast cultural interest, making the scroll internationally  famous. Almost all the scrolls went to museums, but a few fragments ended up in private hands.

Until 1991, limited access to this small number of scrolls only added to their prestige and mystery,  fueling a frenzied demand from scholars and collectors. Earnest buyers turned to dealers which  created an opportunity for forgers. Counterfeit fragments flooded the antiquities market in the  early 2000’s. Many professionals were deceived, including those at the Museum of the Bible.

Now the scholarly community is charged with separating dozens of fakes from the  thousands of real Dead Sea Scrolls fragments. But how can we determine the difference between  an authentic fragment and a counterfeit?

Discover the intense interest in the scrolls, and how scholars and scientists detected the  forgeries.

One of the most important aspects of the exhibit was the museum’s extraordinary admission  of culpability. Under the heading “Transparency Matters,” the museum makes the following  humble acknowledgement:

“Museum of the Bible made mistakes. The scholarly community helped the museum to correct  course, ask the right questions, and seek answers. It is the responsibility of the museum to steward  collections and present facts with integrity. Forgeries and the illicit market threaten our  understanding of the past and Museum of the Bible has the responsibility to detect and handle  these issues.

Museum of the Bible took the first steps in righting a wrong and strives to be a model for other collecting institutions. This episode offers lessons for the future.”

To make good on the museum’s commitment to transparency, and to encourage ongoing  scholarly discourse, the exhibition was accompanied by a research portal on the MOTB website  which contains hundreds of curated fragment images including micrographs, multispectral  photographs and Hirox videos. The images can be manipulated and zoomed, offering  unprecedented access to examine research material. The portal also includes a feedback  mechanism which encourages comments through a moderated discussion board.

The exhibition was organized by the Museum of the Bible and was co-curated by Colette Loll, Herschel Hepler and Christy Wallover under the direction of Rena Opert, Director of Exhibits.

‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the Museum of the Bible are all forgeries

Washington, D.C.On the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible, a sweeping permanent exhibit tells the story of how the ancient scripture became the world’s most popular book. A warmly lit sanctum at the exhibit’s heart reveals some of the museum’s most prized possessions: fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient texts that include the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible.

But now, the Washington, D.C. museum has confirmed a bitter truth about the fragments’ authenticity. On Friday, independent researchers funded by the Museum of the Bible announced that all 16 of the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries that duped outside collectors, the museum’s founder, and some of the world’s leading biblical scholars. Officials unveiled the findings at an academic conference hosted by the museum.

“The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” says CEO Harry Hargrave. “We’re victims—we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud.”

In a report spanning more than 200 pages, a team of researchers led by art fraud investigator Colette Loll found that while the pieces are probably made of ancient leather, they were inked in modern times and modified to resemble real Dead Sea Scrolls. “These fragments were manipulated with the intent to deceive,” Loll says.

The new findings don’t cast doubt on the 100,000 real Dead Sea Scroll fragments, most of which lie in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. However, the report’s findings raise grave questions about the “post-2002” Dead Sea Scroll fragments, a group of some 70 snippets of biblical text that entered the antiquities market in the 2000s. Even before the new report, some scholars believed that most to all of the post-2002 fragments were modern fakes.

“Once one or two of the fragments were fake, you know all of them probably are, because they come from the same sources, and they look basically the same,” says Årstein Justnes, a researcher at Norway’s University of Agder whose Lying Pen of Scribes project tracks the post-2002 fragments.

Since its 2017 opening, the Museum of the Bible has funded research into the pieces and sent off five fragments to Germany’s Federal Institute for Materials Research for testing. In late 2018, the museum announced the results to the world: All five tested fragments were probably modern forgeries.

But what of the other 11 fragments? And how had the forgers managed to fool the world’s leading Dead Sea Scroll scholars and the Museum of the Bible?

“It really was—and still is—an interesting kind of detective story,” says Jeffrey Kloha, the Museum of the Bible’s chief curatorial officer. “We really hope this is helpful to other institutions and researchers, because we think this provides a good foundation for looking at other pieces, even if it raises other questions.”

Under the microscope

To find out more about its fragments, the Museum of the Bible reached out to Loll and her company, Art Fraud Insights, in February 2019 and charged her with conducting a thorough physical and chemical investigation of all 16 pieces. Loll was no stranger to fakes and forgeries. After getting her master’s in art history at George Washington University, Loll went on to study international art crime, run forgery investigations, and train federal agents on matters of cultural heritage.

Loll insisted on independence. Not only would the Museum of the Bible have no say on the team’s findings, her report would be final—and would have to be released to the public. The Museum of the Bible agreed to the terms. “Honestly, I’ve never worked with a museum that was so up-front,” Loll says.

Loll quickly assembled a team of five conservators and scientists. From February to October, the team periodically visited the museum and pulled together their findings. By the time their report was finalized in November 2019, the researchers were unanimous. All 16 fragments appeared to be modern forgeries.

First, the team concluded that the fragments were seemingly made of the wrong material. Nearly all the authentic Dead Sea Scrolls fragments are made of tanned or lightly tanned parchment, but at least 15 of the Museum of the Bible’s fragments were made of leather, which is thicker, bumpier, and more fibrous.

How forgers fooled the Bible museum with fake Dead Sea Scroll fragments

(CNN)Last year, the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, said five of its most valuable artifacts — once thought to be part of the historic Dead Sea Scrolls — were fake.
Now the museum is facing a harder truth: All of its 16 expensive fragments are forgeries.
This weekend, at a conference in Washington scrambled by the coronavirus pandemic, experts released a 200-page report revealing how the forgeries fooled scholars and buyers on the antiquities market.

“After an exhaustive review of all the imaging and scientific analysis results, it is evident that none of the textual fragments in Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scroll collection are authentic,” said the leader of the investigation, Colette Loll, the director of Art Fraud Insights, in a statement.
“Moreover, each exhibits characteristics that suggest they are deliberate forgeries created in the twentieth century with the intent to mimic authentic Dead Sea Scroll fragments.”

The findings were originally scheduled to be made public at the Museum of the Bible on Sunday, but the event was postponed.
CNN raised questions about the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments in 2017 as the Green family prepared to unveil their $500 million museum.
Now scholars say the Dead Sea forgeries could be part of the most significant sham in biblical archeology since the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife,” which hoodwinked a Harvard scholar and made worldwide news in 2012.
Some scholars estimate that as many as 70 forged fragments, purportedly part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, have hit the market since 2002. Revelations about the Green’s collection could raise more questions about ancient biblical artifacts bought by other evangelicals, often for millions of dollars.

Why the scrolls are so coveted

Discovered 70 years ago in caves around Qumran, the Dead Sea Scrolls are among archaeology’s most significant scriptural finds, containing the oldest versions of the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish texts that date to the time of Jesus. Most of the scrolls are kept at the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem
In 2018, German-based scholars tested the five of the Bible museum’s fragments and said they “show characteristics inconsistent with ancient origin.”
Oklahoma billionaires, the Greens are best-known for their chain of Hobby Lobby craft stores and their religious freedom battle with the Obama administration over covering contraception in company health care plans.

Visitors look at an exhibit about the Dead Sea scrolls at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, on November 14, 2017.

The news of the forgeries is a significant embarrassment for the new museum, which, at 430,000 square feet in the heart of downtown DC, is a deep investment for its evangelical founders.
Museum leaders portrayed the fiasco as good for museums and the antiquities market.
“The sophisticated and costly methods employed to discover the truth about our collection could be used to shed light on other suspicious fragments and perhaps even be effective in uncovering who is responsible for these forgeries,” said Jeffrey Kloha, the Museum of the Bible’s chief curator, in a statement.
Heather Cirmo, a spokeswoman for the Bible Museum, said Steve Green, the museum’s founder and board chairman, is not commenting on this project, though he is supportive of it. Cirmo said the Bible museum will not release the cost of the tests.
Green has declined to say how much his family spent for the 16 fake Dead Sea Scrolls fragments. Scholars say that similar, authentic artifacts can fetch millions in the antiquities market.

Steve Green, president of Hobby Lobby and chairman of the board of Museum of the Bible, speaks during a media preview of the museum dedicated to the history, narrative and impact of the Bible in Washington, DC, in November 2017.

How the forgeries were made

The forgers likely used ancient scraps, possibly from archaeological sites around the Qumran caves. But most of the Green’s fake fragments are leather, not parchment like the rest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, according to the report by Art Fraud Insights. The leather scraps could have been bits from ancient Roman shoes, the report speculates.
To make convincing forgeries, the forgers coated the scraps with a shiny amber material, most likely animal glue, to fix tears and match the waxy sheen of authentic Dead Sea scroll fragments, the report says. Remarkably, despite being bought from for different sellers, all were coated by the same amber material, suggesting the forgeries may have come from the same hand.
Among the forgers’ errors, according to the report, was in using modern ink to write snippets from the Bible on the ancient scraps, according to an analysis by German labs. And the writing itself bore clues: letters appeared to follow the creases and tears of the ancient leather, an indication that someone was trying hard to write on the uneven surfaces.
While the ink was still wet, the forgers scattered variety of loose mineral deposits consistent with the Dead Sea region.
“It is our opinion that all of these methods were utilized with the intent to deceive,” the report says.
To confirm the forgery, the six-member advisory team hired by the museum used a superhero-esque array of gadgetry, including 3D microscopes, infrared spectroscopy and “energy dispersive X-ray analysis.”

Dr. Adolfo Roitman presents a part of the Isaiah Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, inside the vault of the Shrine of the Book building at the Israel Museum in September 2011.

Where did the forgeries come from?

The report released this weekend doesn’t detail the fake fragment’s provenance, or history of how they ended up in the Green’s hands. It only says the textual artifacts were “purchased on behalf of” the Green family “in four lots from four separate private collectors.”
During a 2017 interview at the Bible museum, Green said he wasn’t sure who sold him the Dead Sea Scroll fragments. “There’s been different sources, but I don’t know specifically where those came from.”
But for years, scholars, including some hired by the Bible museum have expressed doubts about their authenticity.
Kipp Davis, a scholar at Canada’s Trinity Western University, published evidence in 2017 that cast doubt on two Museum of the Bible fragments, including one that was on display when the museum opened in 2017.
One fragment’s lettering squeezed into a corner that wouldn’t have existed when the writing surface was new. Another appeared to have a Greek letter alpha where a 1930s reference Hebrew Bible used an alpha to flag a footnote.

‘It’s the First Domino’: After the Museum of the Bible Discovered Its Dead Sea Scrolls Are Fake, the Field Braces for More Revelations

There’s more bad news for the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. Every single one of its 16 fragments of the famed Dead Sea Scrolls have been found to be modern-day forgeries—not just the five previously identified fakes. And since the Museum of the Bible’s trove was a small part of a much larger group of scroll fragments that have since spread around the globe, the finding could have big implications for the field.

The museum announced the news at an academic symposium on Friday, presenting the results of a battery of tests conducted by outside experts between May and October of 2019. In a 200-page report, the five-person team judged the artifacts to be 20th-century forgeries meant to mimic the famed Dead Sea Scrolls first discovered in 1947 in Israel’s Qumran caves. The findings were first announced by National Geographic, and have already launched a contentious debate on Twitter.

“We came to an unanimous conclusion that they were all forgeries,” Colette Loll, founder of Art Fraud Insights, which conducted the tests, told Artnet News. “There were a lot of anomalies that we identified through microscopy.”

How the Fakes Were Caught

Loll cited several pieces of evidence that led her team to its conclusion. Instead of being made from tanned or lightly tanned parchment, like the real Dead Sea Scrolls, the Museum of the Bible’s fragments were made of leather—likely ancient, perhaps from the soles of old shoes.

“After 2,000 years, leather and parchment look very similar,” said Loll. “Until you do a high magnification analysis, as well as a chemical and elemental analysis, you really can’t tell the difference.”

But under a microscope, there were several dead giveaways—first of all, the leather was very bumpy and rough. “It was obvious to us that the scribe had a very difficult time writing on the surface, unlike the clean smooth parchment that would have been used 2,000 years ago,” Loll explained.

More damningly, a close examination showed that the writing had been applied to a surface that was already fragmented—the ink dripped over the sides and fell into cracks that wouldn’t have existed when the leather was new.

One of the fake Dead Sea Scrolls from the Museum of the Bible at high magnification, revealing anomalies. Photo courtesy of Art Fraud Insights.

One of the fake Dead Sea Scrolls from the Museum of the Bible at high magnification, revealing anomalies. Photo courtesy of Art Fraud Insights.

“This confirmed our conclusion that ancient materials were repurposed for the creation of these fragments,” said Loll.

Another clue was that parts of the real Dead Sea Scrolls look a bit like they’ve been coated in glue, because the collagen in parchment breaks down over the millennia, turning into gelatin. The fragments from the Museum of the Bible were “heavily impregnated with an amber-colored animal skin glue,” Loll said. “Not only did the coating facilitate the writing on these uneven and bumpy surfaces, but it also served to mimic the degradation you would see in the authentic scrolls.”

“It’s the First Domino”

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the oldest-known Biblical texts, and most of them belong to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. There are some 100,000 authenticated fragments, but the Museum of the Bible’s holdings—reportedly acquired for millions of dollars—were all among a group of some 70 previously unknown Dead Sea Scroll fragments that came to market after 2002.

An antiquities dealer named Khalil Iskandar Shahin, also known as Kando, acquired many of the original Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1950s. The post-2002 fragments reportedly were first sold by his son William Kando.

One of the fake Dead Sea Scrolls from the Museum of the Bible at high magnification. Photo courtesy of Art Fraud Insights.

One of the fake Dead Sea Scrolls from the Museum of the Bible at high magnification. Photo courtesy of Art Fraud Insights.

Since the new artifacts appeared on the market, institutions and private collectors have spent somewhere between $35 million and $45 million to purchase them, Dead Sea Scroll expert Rabbi Lawrence Schiffman told those assembled at Friday’s symposium. All those fragments, considered suspect for years, are now definitively called into question—and it seems all but certain other forgeries will be identified.

“This is the first domino,” said Loll.

A Debate Over the Findings

Between 2009 and 2014, Hobby Lobby tycoon Steve Green snapped up 16 of the post-2002 fragments for his planned Museum of the Bible—seven directly from Kando, the rest from bookseller Craig Lampe, collector Andrew Stimer, and book collector Michael Sharpe. Before the institution even opened, it put together a 2016 book, Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments in the Museum Collection, published by Brill. It offered a scholarly analysis of the artifacts, but no scientific testing had been conducted.

Despite Loll’s damning findings, one of the lead editors of the 2016 book, biblical scholar Emanuel Tov, contests the new report because similar tests were not conducted on authentic Dead Sea Scrolls as a baseline of comparison. “The report expects us to conclude that abnormalities abound without demonstrating what is normal,” he told Nat Geo.

But other experts have been suspicious for quite some time. As the 430,000-square-foot museum’s November 2017 opening date approached, concerns over the fragments’ authenticity began to mount—one of the book’s other authors, Kipp Davis, even published an article raising the possibility of forgery. At the same time, the institution itself became the subject of controversy.

Visitors tour the "History of the Bible" exhibit at the Museum of the Bible n Washington, DC. Photo by Saul Loeb, courtesy of AFP Photo/Getty Images.

Visitors tour the “History of the Bible” exhibit at the Museum of the Bible n Washington, DC. Photo by Saul Loeb, courtesy of AFP Photo/Getty Images.

A Trouble-Plagued Museum

Investigators questioned the provenance of the $30 million collection that Green began amassing in 2009, and found that the company had imported looted artifacts. Hobby Lobby ultimately reached a settlement, returning 5,500 smuggled Iraqi artifacts and paying a $3 million fine. They were forced to return 13 Egyptian Biblical artifacts in 2019.

By that point, an initial analysis of five of the Dead Sea Scroll fragments had already been carried out, showing them to be inauthentic. That’s when they called Loll to amp up the search.

“The Museum of the Bible really wanted to put this question to rest, and they committed significant resources. I recruited an incredible team of scientists, conservators, and imaging scientists,” said Loll, who agreed to carry out the necessary scientific analysis because the institution promised total transparency.

“The Museum of the Bible has had some pretty significant criticism, justifiably so, given these missteps in their collecting practices,” she added. “It was clear to all involved that this project had to be completely independent.”

The museum is currently closed to the public due to the current global health crisis. Before it reopens, the remaining scroll fragment forgeries will be removed from view. What remains to be seen is who, exactly, created these modern-day forgeries and how they found their way to the marketplace.

One of the fake Dead Sea Scrolls from the Museum of the Bible at high magnification. Photo courtesy of Art Fraud Insights.

One of the fake Dead Sea Scrolls from the Museum of the Bible at high magnification. Photo courtesy of Art Fraud Insights.

What’s Next

“As for who was responsible,” said Loll, “the scope of my research was confirm or refute authenticity. The next phase of the research will likely look into where and when and who. But there are a limited number of dealers whose hands have touched these post-2002 Dead Sea Scroll fragments.”

The museum will be making Loll’s report available to the public in the hopes of identifying other forgeries. “The sophisticated and costly methods employed to discover the truth about our collection could be used to shed light on other suspicious fragments and perhaps even be effective in uncovering who is responsible for these forgeries,” said Jeffrey Kloha, the institution’s chief curatorial officer, in a statement.

The uncovering of such high-profile forgeries stands as a reminder that antiquities collectors are perhaps particularly vulnerable to fraud. “Doing extensive due diligence is always really important, especially when you’re looking at biblical text,” said Loll. “Often times, the collectors are ideologically motivated—and the market takes advantage of that.”

Nowhere to hide: new tool brings technical firepower to the fight against fraudsters

Julia Halperin of The Art Newspaper, breaks the story on Art Fraud Insights newly launched, Art and Artistic Legacy Protection platform, launched in collaboration with Strategic IP Information.

A new platform launching this month from Art Fraud Insights seeks to clean up the unregulated online art marketplace by hunting down fakes, forgeries and copyright infringement. The Art and Artistic Legacy Protection (AALP) service will work with artists and artist-endowed foundations to scour the darkest corners of the internet for bogus sale listings and unauthorised copies.

Read the full article here and learn more about AALP here.

Winterthur exhibit offers insight into detecting art fraud

 

Recent forgery scandals in the art world have captured headlines around the world, raising questions about the authenticity of art, antiquities, and collectibles. The timely exhibition Treasures on Trial: The Art and Science of Detecting Fakes revealed some of the most clever and most costly deceptions of our time by pairing diverse examples of fake objects with conservation science from Winterthur’s own Scientific Research and Analysis Lab, alongside the research of several other leading conservation scientists in the country. Visitors saw more than 60 examples of fakes and forgeries from the Winterthur collection as well as public and private sources and discovered the motives for their creation and the evidence used in their detection.

 

The exhibition examined artwork, couture, silver, sporting memorabilia, musical instruments, antiquities, and stamps along with ceramics, furniture and folk art. This broad selection of luxury and everyday objects further illustrated the rarity, supply, and desirability can make anything fair game for a clever forger or fraudster intent on turning a handsome profit.

 

Scientific analysis and stylistic clues were presented alongside artwork and objects, exposing the broad range of motives and techniques used to test and fool collectors and experts. These tricks of the trade also revealed fascinating stories about the forgers themselves.

Treasures on Trial will examined intriguing questions such as: What gets faked and why? How do you spot a fake? How does scientific methodology assist in this? Visitors were also invited to investigate several unresolved examples and share their opinion about the authenticity of the object based on the available evidence.

The exhibition was organized by Winterthur Museum & Gardens and is co-curated by Colette Loll and Winterthur’s Director of Collections and Senior Curator of Textiles Linda Eaton.

Add link to online exhibition:

http://treasuresontrial.winterthur.org/