More re fake Coptic art at the Brooklyn

New York Sun

Doubts about the Brooklyn Museum's sculptures date back at least to 1977, when a Byzantine art scholar who is now the director of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Gary Vikan, argued that they were forgeries in a lecture he delivered at Columbia.

But if the existence of the fakes is old news, where and by whom they were made remain mysterious.

According to a 2001 article by a former curator at the Brooklyn Museum, Donald Spanel, a large number of fakes appeared on the market beginning in the late 1950s, offered by dealers mostly in Switzerland and in New York. One New York dealer, Jerome Eisenberg, acknowledged in a phone interview that he had sold the museum one piece now considered to be fake, a roundel with a border of palm fronds and a central bust. The museum acquired the piece in 1960.

Asked where he bought the roundel, Mr. Eisenberg said that he purchased it from a "very reliable, very ethical" dealer in Cairo, a Copt named Kamel Hammouda. Asked if he knew where Mr. Hammouda got the sculpture, Mr. Eisenberg said that it was against the rules of the trade at the time to ask such questions.