Museum Valse Kunst, Drenthe Province, The Netherlands

4ploddinghappily 5:00 PM Dec 22, 2012

Very entertaining and worthwhile
If you happen to be in Drenthe, one of the Eastern provinces in the Netherlands or, if you are on your way from Amsterdam to Germany by car, you may consider swinging by Vledder to visit the Museum of Fake Art. In this museum, an entertaining selection of forgeries of well-known paintings and other works of art of famous artists are displayed. The best-known Dutch forger is Han van Meegeren who successfully imitated Jan Vermeer and other old Dutch masters. The funny thing was that at the end of his career he had to prove, with considerable difficulty, that he was the forger, because he would otherwise go to jail on another technicality. Another master forger is Geert Jan Jansen, who was arrested in a French castle with some 1600 paintings of contemporary masters, such as Picasso, Matisse, and especially of Karel Appel. All of these were fakes painted by him. He had already sold hundreds of them to established museums all over the world. His favorite ploy is to make a painting in the Appel style and sign it “na Appel”, which means “in the style of Appel”. The buyer can, if he so wishes, erase the letters “na”, (specially applied to the painting to be erased easily) and lo and behold, he has an Appel. But the best part of the museum is the tour, where the guide gives a hilarious, entertaining, and very knowledgeable presentation of how and what the master forgers did to mislead the public. And how museums were duped into acquiring these forgeries, after which many do not want to have these paintings rechecked for authenticity. Call ahead at 0521-38 33 52, to find out the times of the tour and when there is one in English (or French, or German, etc.) The Dutch are multilingual. Without the tour, the museum is just average, so be sure to schedule a tour.

4MariekeR610 5:00 PM Sep 5, 2020

Nice surprise
We had to find something to do during a rainy afternoon and this was perfect! Nice to see the art and the stories that go with it. Nicely organized!