Joining Plastic, Glass and Metal on the Recycle List: Fake Art

Experts say discredited works of art often resurface on the market again and again, in part because their owners just won’t take no for an answer.

Anyone who thinks works of art declared to be fake simply disappear in disgrace or are destroyed should talk to Jane Kallir, the author of the catalog raisonné for Egon Schiele, the Austrian painter. She was offered the same fake Schiele watercolor for authentication, she said, 10 times by 10 different collectors. Or perhaps chat with David L. Hall, the former federal prosecutor who used to handle cases developed by the F.B.I.’s art crime team. He will tell you about a watercolor attributed to Andrew Wyeth that came on the market three times after Wyeth himself called it a fake. One dealer had paid $20,000 for it, and when he tried to sell it at auction in 2008, the curator of Wyeth’s collection recognized it and contacted the F.B.I., which seized it. The F.B.I. ultimately gave it to Hall as a token of appreciation for all the years he spent pursuing the cases it had developed.