1st Edition

Faking the Ancient Andes

By Karen O Bruhns, Nancy L Kelker Copyright 2010
    222 Pages
    by Routledge

    222 Pages
    by Routledge

    Nasca pots, Quimbaya figurines, Moche porn figures, stone shamans. Fakes and forgeries run rampant in the Andean art collections of international museums and private individuals. Authors Karen Bruhns and Nancy Kelker examine the phenomenon in this eye-opening volume. They discuss the most commonly forged classes and styles of artifacts, many of which were being duplicated as early as the 19th century. More important, they describe the system whereby these objects get made, purchased, authenticated, and placed in major museums as well as the complicity of forgers, dealers, curators, and collectors in this system. Unique to this volume are biographies of several of the forgers, who describe their craft and how they are able to effectively fool connoisseurs and specialists. This is an important accessible introduction to pre-Columbian art fraud for archaeologists, art historians, and museum professionals alike. A parallel volume by the same authors discusses fakes in Mesoamerican archaeology.

    Chapter 1 Imagined Histories; Chapter 2 Artisans, Ateliers, and Their Faux Works; Chapter 3 All that Glitters Is not Old; Chapter 4 All Slipped Up and Everywhere To Go; Chapter 5 Clay-Mates, or Imagination Run Riot; Chapter 6 Hard Cheese for Hard Rocks; Chapter 7 Pocket Candy—Lapidary Arts and Objets de Vertu in the Andes; Chapter 8 Woodcarvers, Weavers, and Fake Mummies?; Chapter 9 Phoenicians and Dinosaurs The Squirrelly Side of Forgery;

    Biography

    Bruhns, Karen O; Kelker, Nancy L