Art and Authenticity

People commonly use terms like “authentic,” “real” or “genuine” to describe works of art and to denote their value.

These terms are often used interchangeably, but what do they actually mean, and how have their definitions changed over time?

Featuring works from the UAMA collection, this exhibition explores the spectrum of authenticity through the display of originals, copies, replicas, fakes and forgeries — along with a few mysterious works that are still in question.

Visitors can also view archival materials from the museum’s records that provide additional context for these discoveries and shed light on the fields of connoisseurship, technical analysis and provenance research.