Original and Fake in Art: We Are Easy to Delude

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Almost every second picture on the market could be a fake. But does this insight have to diminish the joy of viewing it? Many years ago I met a man in a pub in Bloomsbury in London who said he was working at the British Museum. He told me that every single exhibit in the museum was a replica, and that all the originals were stored in the depot for conservation reasons. I dismayed him. It could not be that the millions of visitors of the British …