Museum of Art Fakes

The Museum of Art Fakes at Loewengasse 28 in Vienna's third district, Landstrasse, is, by its own account, the only museum in the German-speaking world devoted entirely to art forgeries. Founded in 2005 by Vienna businesspeople Diane Grobe and Christian Rastl, it displays original works by the most notorious forgers of the modern era: Han van Meegeren with his pseudo-Vermeers, Wolfgang Beltracchi with paintings in the style of Max Ernst and Heinrich Campendonk, Tom Keating and Edgar Mrugalla. The exhibition is small but content-dense: each piece is presented with context on how the fraud was uncovered and what the consequences were for collectors and auction houses. Visitors learn the forgers' material tricks, from artificially aged binders to faked stamps, and grasp why even museums were fooled for years.