ABSTRACT
The art world as portrayed on television and in the movies is a romantic place, filled with lonely, starving geniuses (any artist in the Western corpus will do nicely) who create great masterworks of art; somewhat less lonely forgers—for example, a Han van Meegeren, Jef van der Veken, Elmyr de Hory, Eric Hebborn, or John Myatt (among countless others)—who copy those masterpieces; and, of course, really dashing, sexy, hero-crooks: thieves and looters who are not at all lonely or starving, such as Thomas Crown and Indiana Jones. The real world of art forgery and antiquities looting is not so entertaining, so gentlemanly, or quite so well scripted. In the case of the ancient Americas, when the topic of art forgery is discussed, it is a relatively rare occur-rence that artists involved in the business are mentioned except in vague generalities; the names of specific artists are not usually known. This is due in part to the fact that the craftspeople manufacturing the forgeries are usually on the poorly paid bottom rung of the business, and partly due to the secretive and illicit nature of the art/antiquities business in general.
