A French Museum Realized Over The Weekend That More Than Half Of Its Paintings Are Fake

Telegraph- A state-owned French art museum has discovered that more than half of its collection consists of worthless fakes and experts fear that other public galleries may also be stuffed with forgeries. An art historian raised the alarm after noticing that paintings attributed to Etienne Terrus showed buildings that were only constructed after the artist’s death in 1922. Experts confirmed that 82 of the 140 works displayed at the Terrus museum in Elne, the artist’s birthplace in southern France, were fakes. Many of the forged oil paintings, watercolours and drawings were bought with £140,000 of municipal funds over the past few decades. Others were given to the museum by two local groups that raised money to buy them by appealing for donations. Some were bequeathed by a private collector.

Whoops! I’m not even sure how this is possible. Museums have one job and that’s putting up authentic art. That’s really it. And maybe making sure people don’t touch the art with their grubby paws. So it’s a tough look if you’re a museum and you’re batting .414 with your paintings. You want that average to be a bit higher. Big mistake by the French museum admitting their mistake though. They should’ve just said nothing. Who cares? Nobody knows a real painting from a fake one. Well some people do but those people are in the minority and I’m not even sure they can tell.

Most folks go to a museum to pretend they’re smart. I’ve done it. You go, you act cultured for an hour then you get back to being an uncultured piece of shit. It’s great. So 99.9% of people would’ve looked at those French paintings, assumed they were real and kept it moving. Cause why wouldn’t they be? Any museum you’ve ever been to could’ve been full of fake paintings. You don’t know.

I wanna open a museum with all fake paintings except one real one. Or all real paintings except for one fake one. Then bring in a bunch of art experts and see if they can pick out the real or fake one. No way they would be able to. No way in hell.

PS- If you ever wanna make waves during a museum visit, loudly proclaim that Pablo Picasso died in 1973.