Crime and Spectacle: Theft, Forgery and Propaganda Symposium Recap

By Caroline Haller

citation: Haller, Caroline. “Crime and Spectacle: Theft, Forgery and Propaganda Symposium Recap ” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture, November 26th, 2021.

Last Saturday, CMSMC held our fall symposium, Crime and Spectacle: Theft, Forgery, and Propaganda. The program featured six speakers and welcomed more than sixty-five attendees. 

Thank you to all who attended for your continued support! For those of you who were unable to attend, please find a short recap of the event below. Additionally, please find a recording of the event on our site .

The symposium opened with Laura Calhoun’s “Discovering Disingenuous and Spurious Art: Best Practices for Managing Fakes and Forgeries in Museums.” Calhoun earned a master’s degree in museum studies from Harvard University Extension School in 2014. Currently, Calhoun serves as the exhibitions and collections manager at the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art. Calhoun’s presentation considered a critical question facing museums today: what steps should be taken when a fake or forgery is discovered in their collections? 

In addressing this question, Calhoun proposed the advancement of a national strategy for museums, one that would mandate cross-institutional transparency and accountability. As Calhoun noted, the United States currently maintains no comprehensive policy for deaccessioning, displaying, or storing fraudulent works. Calhoun highlighted three case studies: forgeries in the styles of artists Han Van Meegeren, Mark Landis, and Ken Perenyi. 

Francesca Bisi continued this conversation on ethical practice in museums through “Conquête militaire: The Ethics of Restitution of the Louvre’s Napoleonic Legacy,” examining works in the Louvre’s collection looted by Napoleon. These objects include Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana, 1563. The Louvre describes the provenance of this work, like others taken from Italy during Napoleonic conquests, as coming to the museum by way of a conquête militaire. This documentation, argued Bisi, may identify military conquest as an acceptable mode of artwork acquisition. 

In conclusion, Bisi advocated for an updated policy for displaying and documenting artworks known to have entered the museum’s collection by less than ethical means. Bisi earned a bachelor’s degree in art history and criticism in 2019 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a MSc with a concentration in history, classics, and archeology from the University of Edinburgh in 2020. Bisi is currently working towards a M.A. in art history and museum studies at Tufts University. 

The third panelist, Yuma Terada, presented “Money, Model, Medium: Model One Thousand-Yen Note Incident, 1963-1970,” examining artist Genpei Akasegawa’s 1963 printing of monochrome, imitation one thousand yen notes, the ensuing criminal charges, and the artist’s motives. Many historians suggest that Akasegawa created the model yen as a statement on Japanese state censorship during the socio-political unrest of the sixties. However, Terada encouraged us to see Model less as an anti-state protest piece, and more as an exploration of money and global art practice during the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. 

In 2005, Terada earned bachelor’s degrees in history and theory of architecture and political science from Columbia College at Columbia University, New York. Terada is currently working towards a Ph.D. in modern and contemporary art, critical and curatorial studies, from Columbia College at Columbia University, New York. 

The next presenter was Abigail Epplett. In May of 2021, Epplett earned a master’s degree in museum education from Tufts University. Additionally, Epplett holds a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College with majors in creative industries and creative writing and literature. Epplett’s paper, “Money-Driven Villainy: Marketing the American Abolitionist Movement,” examined the complex visual messaging in the posters (broadside) that encouraged readers to break the law through abolitionist activities. At the same time, the style and design of these posters mimicked pro-slavery material and reflected a belief in a white saviorism.

Following Epplett, Elizabeth Paulson presented “Take Heed of Revelations: Puritanism, Spirituality and Mental Instability in the Case of Dorothy Talby.” Paulson examined the 1638 murder trial of Difficulty Talby, the three-year-old daughter of Dorothy Talby. Paulson utilized primary sources including the journal of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop as well as court records, church records, local legislation, and biblical texts to examine the public spectacle of Dorothy’s trial and execution. Paulson considered colonial attitudes towards capital punishment, spirituality, and mental illness. Paulson earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Carleton College and is working toward a master’s degree in history from Tufts University. 

Rachel Christ-Doane, director of education for the Salem Witch Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, delivered the keynote presentation. Christ earned a master’s degree in history and museum studies from Tufts University in 2020 and holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Clark University. Her presentation, “The Salem Witch Trials and Public Memory” focused on the unique struggles that the Salem Witch Museum faces and how they have endeavored to tell the narrative of the Salem witch trials as the contemporary understanding of the witch figure evolves. 

The notion of dark tourism foregrounded Christ-Doane’s presentation and provided context for the entire symposium. Tourists are often drawn to tragedy, crime, and spectacle. While this provides institutions like the Salem Witch Museum the opportunity to educate a wide, engaged public, it also proves a heavy burden. Just how should the Salem Witch Museum pay homage to the evolution of the witch, from its horrific past to its adored present? 

Christ-Doane and colleagues work to answer this question through the exhibition Witches: Evolving Perceptions, which first opened in 1990 to supplement the museum’s main exhibition, which opened in 1972. Witches unpacks the dynamic story and the image of the witch, ending with an interpretive wall that engages visitors with the formula, fear + trigger = scapegoat. During the seventeenth century, the fear of being cursed and the triggers of famine and sickness exacerbated a fear directed towards women, particularly those identified as witches. More contemporary examples of this scapegoat theory include infection + AIDS => discrimination against the LGBTQIA community, and infection + COVID-19 => hate crimes against the Asian community. 

At the conclusion of the panel presentations, the speakers participated in a question-and-answer session. The panelists reflected on why crime and spectacle are so enticing to a modern audience. They considered the role of gender in crime and spectacle. With the meteoric rise in popularity of true crime content today, dark tourism and a good scandal can entice people to engage with public history in unexpected ways. How do we successfully relay a historical narrative while paying homage to the contemporary understanding of material culture? This question brought up the relation of material culture to identity. Material culture is, perhaps, the most visual form of identity. Therefore, theft, looting, and fakes often feel like an attack on our very senses of self. How then do we display, care for, and teach the stories of those objects with troubled histories of forgery, theft, crime, or spectacle? The first and potentially most crucial step may be to simply maintain transparency with the public.

Special thanks to our symposium committee: Christine Staton, Caroline Haller, Reb Xu, Maille Radford, Mary Manfredi, and Peri Buch.