BBC News covers the Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition of fake coptic and pagan sculptures. The museum has a large collection acquired during the years after World War 2 but recent opinion puts a third of the works beyond bounds. They’re fakes and the museum decided to make a show of it:

Experts say there is no way of knowing exactly who carved the limestone fakes, though one theory suggests they may have been produced by prisoners-of-war in Egypt.

Coptic and Pagan sculpture flooded the Western art market after World War II.

Edna Russmann, curator in charge of the exhibition – entitled Unearthing The Truth – hopes it will prompt galleries to examine their own collections more thoroughly.

“I know that other museums have fakes, (in) all kinds of fields and all kinds of subjects,” she said.

Some of the fakes are easy to spot, but others display a high level of craftsmanship. Set among them are genuine works that have been touched up or re-carved.

The forgeries place a greater emphasis on Christian iconography than many of the real works – a sign, say experts, of them being made to order for European and North American buyers.

Fake Art Stars in New York Show (BBC News)

Also of Interest:

• Aussie Artists Get Fakes Destroyed
  The Age gives some space to Karen Abidi, an intellectual property lawyer, who thinks a judge’s recent decision to give...
  
• Million-Dollar Fakes in Aus
  Australia’s The Age follows the continuing drama and frustration surrounding fake works circulating in the Australian art market. Stephen Nall,...
  
• Tribal Art’s Prices Hold Up
  Agence France Presse covers the market in African tribal works earlier this month as the best dealers in the world...
  
• A Plague of Fakes
  Bloomberg‘s John Varoli covers the revelation that a substantial number of works of Russian art are, in fact, counterfeit. The...
  
• Fakes from North Korea
  North Korean art has been getting a lot of attention around Asia recently. But it turns out getting your hands...