By all accounts, this year’s Art Basel in Miami was a cultural and financial success. Many millions of dollars worth of fine art was bought and sold at the annual international art festival that has regularly set up camp in Miami Beach and more recently in the Wynwood Art District in Miami. Now that the champagne has stopped flowing, the celebrities have gone home and the deals have closed, should art buyers and sellers have any concern about the authenticity of what they bought or sold?
After all, several scandals have rocked the art world in the last few years which might give one pause. For example, it was recently revealed through a criminal prosecution that the Knoedler Gallery in New York, America’s oldest gallery until it closed a few years ago, sold more than 60 fake abstract expressionist paintings for more than $80 million. A New York man recently pleaded guilty to fraud charges in connection with the sale of millions of dollars of fake Jackson Pollock drip paintings. Most recently, actor and Donald Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin sued an art gallery for at least $190,000 for selling him a copy of a painting Baldwin says was doctored by the gallery to look like the real thing.
