Join us for a visit to the only real counterfeiting museum in the world and hear the stories about the forged works of notorious art forgers such as Han van Meegeren, Konrad Kujau, Edgar Mrugalla,Tom Keating, Elmyr de Hory, John Myatt and many others and you get to know the difference between copy, forgery and plagiarism.
The museum highlights identity forgeriesi.e. identical copies of existing works, style fakes meaning painting in the style of a famous artist, copies of existing works as well as oddities, existing works that have been altered or edited, false fakes, false claims, and more.
The collection includes fakes of the works of Schiele, Klimt, van Gogh, Monet, Raffael, Rembrandt hanging there under whitewashed vaults.
Some counterfeiters are themselves so famous that the forged works get the value of an original. For instance, the forgeries of Konrad Kujau forging Hitler’s diaries in the 1980’s became so valuable that they were forged again by an alleged niece of Kujau herself.
There is a small corner with books about art forgery. Sit down and read a bit about what the business really is!
Unfortunately, there is no loo at all. According to the museum management, one might be installed in 2024.
The museum is located in the basement and you can only get there through stairs so this is not a place for the handicapped or if you’d like to come with a pram.
At the entrance, there is a small museum shop but we did not quite see the relevance of the items on sale. Maybe you might wish to have a look, though.
Fälschermuseum, Museum of Art Fakes
Löwengasse 28, 1030 Wien