Authenticity and Art Crime: A Challenging Case Study (Delft part)

An artwork is often valued primarily on account of its attribution to a specific creator or location of origin, date or period, and provenance, i.e. not only on the basis of its physical appearance. While an attribution may provide an historical context to the work, establish quality and uniqueness, all these subjectively meaningful parameters are undermined should the work turn out to be a forgery.

When authenticating art, experts eventually decide what is of cultural significance and what is not. Authenticity has concrete repercussions on the market, in the form of its influence on an artwork’s economic value, and in law, given the liability of experts and sellers for misattributions and the sale of forgeries. For the past two decades the art world has increasingly relied on forensics, i.e. the dedicated chemical and physical investigation of artwork to help answer questions of authenticity. Nowadays, the public museum field, but also the commercial markets such as auction houses and international art fairs involve forensic analysis in their vetting procedure. The expert opinion of the art expert (connoisseurship), the line of ownership of an artwork (the provenance), and materials analysis (forensics) are currently the three most important pillars to establish the authenticity of an artwork.

This class will build on the previous class (MS3320) and consolidate its content by Challenge Based Learning. This means that based on a real-life thesis, students and teachers learn how to deal with multi-faceted practical challenges and engage with them in experimental and practical ways across disciplines and universities and together with societal stakeholders in the cultural heritage field. Research questions will be answered through the phases of Challenge Based Learning: Engage, Investigate and Act. Students will be guided by content and field experts and by methodological experts in the different phases of the Challenge Based Learning process. This will not only teach them how to put their recently obtained knowledge to use, but it may also forge a way of seeing where there is need of improvement in terms of their approach. The course will consist of weekly seminars (each three hours) and a number of field trips. Through a series of assignments, the students will deepen their knowledge and sharpen their skills by collaborating in small groups. In phase two (CBL Investigate) each week, the students will receive small assignments which will help them analyze and discuss the case-study under investigation. These small assignments will focus on a specific aspect or discipline to be considered while doing these kinds of investigations (e.g. one session and assignment will focus on a particular type of visual or chemical analysis or provenance research). These assignments are combined by the students into an individual Portfolio they write throughout the class.

Lastly, in phase three (CBL Act) the students will be encouraged to actively use and apply their developed method to the case-study. In the end, they will formulate possible solutions, conclusions and future research based upon their experiences. This will be presented in the final meeting during a 20 minute talk per group. They will also hand in their Portfolio including a reflection on their collaborations across different disciplines.