In Other News: Allegory, Fakes, HEAR Act, Synergy and Street Art

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Old Masters Faked The 2011 private sale involving a "modern forgery" was undone five years later, when Sotheby's auction house recognized that it sold the work under a false attribution to Frans Hale. The handsome sum of about $10 million dollars paid for the "Portrait of a Man" was reported as reimbursed by the auction house to the buyer in 2016. In January 2017, Sotheby's again made the news for denouncing authenticity of another painting and naming its consignor a defendant in a breach of contract complaint. The second painting, known as "St. Jerome" by an old master from Italy, has been tested by a lab Sotheby's acquired in 2016 and reported as containing modern pigments. Funds at stake from the sale of "St. Jerome" - over $650,000.

The existence of fakes in the art market is no news. The steps taken by different players (private and public actors) to address claims and evidence of misattribution and fraud are newsworthy.