With the art world astir over the $450 million sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, a painting with (to some) questionable provenance, and thousands lining up to view Michelangelo’s ultra-delicate drawings at The Met, the Forgery Show, at Morris Adjmi Architects, is as timely as ever.
Open to the public by appointment, the exhibition features works by Art Roster Atelier, a group of Northern California artists who live at the base of Mt. Shasta. Employing painterly techniques from the Old Masters atelier system of the 18th and 19th Centuries, they’ve created 21 pieces that are dead ringers for the works of Rembrandt, Vermeer, Soutine, Hopper and more. Several versions of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa greet you in the elevator bank to get things started. We were fooled by a few. Find out if you would be, too.
Art Roster has been hosting its own forgery show in California since 2013, and Adjmi Architects invited them to display in New York as part of its own exhibition program, which has been taking place since 2015. The show closes on January 8. The Michelangelo show closes on February 12, by the way. But you probably knew that.
