Imitatio artis
For many collectors, imitating lent or donated artworks is the sincerest form of flattery.
When Frederick Ilchman first arrived at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2001, he found a huge photograph of a Claude Monet water lily painting hanging on a storeroom rack. The reproduction, surrounded by an attractive, wooden frame, had stood in for the genuine Monet on a collector’s wall in the late 1990s, while the original was on loan for an exhibit.
“From more than about 10 feet away, it looked fairly convincing—though the surface was far more glossy than an Impressionist painting,” said Ilchman, the MFA’s chair of European art, who admitted to being fooled by facsimiles in other donor’s homes. “One doesn’t expect to find a framed poster amid valuable originals,” he explained.
Ilchman was one of several experts with whom I spoke for my new artnet piece about artful copies, which museums are creating and with which they furnish collectors and their heirs to replace donated or lent art. I also spoke a few years ago with collector Henry Bloch—the H in H&R Block—at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art about the copies the museum created for him. (Bloch passed away in 2019.)
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