Taking a Look at ‘Made You Look’ (Ep. 259)

Art heists are an endless source of fascination for our students, and–if we’re being honest–for us as teachers as well. In today’s episode, Abby Schukei and Amanda Heyn join Tim to talk about ‘Made You Look’, the new art theft documentary from Barry Avrich that is streaming on Netflix. Listen as they discuss art forgery, their opinions on the main subjects in the film, and how we can leverage storytelling about art crimes in our classrooms. Full Episode Transcript Below.

Resources and Links

• Watch ‘Made You Look’ on Netflix
• The podcast about the Gardner Museum heist, Last Seen
• The Art of the Con
• How to Steal Attention with Art Heists and Forgeries

Transcript

Tim: Welcome to Art Ed Radio, the podcast for art teachers. This show is produced by The Art of Education University and I’m your host, Tim Bogatz. Have you seen the documentary, Made You Look on Netflix? It is an absolutely fascinating documentary about the biggest art fraud in American history and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. The documentary, a lot about it of course but also a little bit about how we can use stories like this to hook and engage our students. And before we dive in I want to give you a quick synopsis of the film.

Now, I think the shortest way I can put this is that in New York in the 1990s and 2000s there was just a trove of undiscovered paintings from abstract expressionists. They came from a woman named Glafira Rosales who sold them to an art dealer named Ann Freedman. Ann Freedman then sold them to collectors from around the world making millions for herself and her art gallery, the Knoedler Gallery. One problem though, all of the paintings were actually fake. They came from an art forger named Pei-Shen Qian, who is actually a math professor in Queens.

And as we move through the documentary, we learn how this web of lies and forgeries kind of unravels. If I note that Glafira and her boyfriend, just a complete grifter named José Carlos Bergantiños Díaz were behind most of the scheme. Pei-Shen Qian, the forger played a relatively minor role I think we can say. And Ann Freedman, we really don’t know with her. She is the main character in the documentary and she is also an enigma. Everyone I’ve talked to has different thoughts on her and how complicit she might be in the whole scheme. I will recommend that you watch and decide for yourself and actually now is a great time, if you haven’t seen the documentary, go watch it, pause the podcast we’ll still be here when you come back and go search Made You Look on Netflix. It is well worth the 90 minutes that it takes to watch it. And those of you that have seen it or if you just think that my 60 second description was enough, stick around as I bring on Abby Schukei and Amanda Heyn and we’ll dive into Made You Look.

All right, I have two guests with me. Abby Schukei, how are you?

Abby: I am very Good. I’m very excited to be here to talk about this topic, I have a lot to say.

Tim: I think this is going to be quite the discussion. I’m also excited. And secondly, Amanda Heyn and how are you?

Amanda:
I am also very good and very excited to talk about this topic. And I also have a lot to say.

Tim: I feel like we’re very fired up about this documentary. So I think it’s going to be good. I gave everybody the overview of the documentary in the intro and so we’re just going to assume we know the story. I encourage everybody to pause the podcast, go watch it and then come back and listen. So we’ll just kind of dive right in. Abby, I will ask you first. Do you remember seeing this story originally? When arrests were made? When the trial was happening? Or was this documentary your first introduction to the story?

Abby: Okay. So I definitely don’t remember seeing anything or reading anything about it on the news or anything like that.

Amanda: Because you were like four [laughter].

Abby: Yeah. I was four in 2019, the trial started or I don’t know I’m sorry but no, I did not hear, I totally missed that in the world of the news apparently but my first introduction was it to it was not through the documentary, it was actually through a book called The Art of the Con by Anthony Amore who is the chief of security at the Isabella… Chief of security and investigation or something at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Amanda: Oh.

Tim: Home of another, maybe the most famous heist of art ever in America.

Abby: Yes. So that’s super interesting because he started working there in 2005. Anyway, he wrote these books one’s called Stealing Rembrandts and then The Art of the Con, which is just basically about all of these art, like fakes, frauds, forgery stories that we don’t necessarily hear about. They’re not like the Gardner Museum’s theft, right?

Tim: Right.

Abby: Which ironically that happened 31 years ago today as we’re speaking right now.

Amanda: My God.

Tim: Interesting.

Abby: Though, interesting that if this is all just coming together like that. So anyway no, this book The Art of the Con was written in 2015. And so I’ve owned it since then. I don’t think I read it until 2018 though so it was before it’s happening, in the book though the part of the trials and stuff that’s not in there because it didn’t exist yet but-

Tim: Yeah.

Abby: That’s how I first knew about it.

Tim: Okay. I’m going to come borrow that book by the way.

Abby: Yes please.

Tim: Amanda what about you? Was this doc the introduction for you?

Amanda: Yes, it was. But I have to say side note, if you like this topic you should all go listen to Last Seen, which is a podcast all about the Gardener heist.

Tim: Great podcast.

Amanda: Really good. Yes, it was. My husband always makes fun of me because you open up my Netflix and it’s like, “Weird foreign documentaries.” It’s all that it wants to suggest to me. So of course this popped up right away is a 99% match. And I loved the title Made You Look. It’s just such a good title.

Tim: It is.

Amanda: Such a good title for a documentary so, yeah I watched it the day that I saw it on my Netflix and I am super excited to talk about it. And I’m puzzled why I didn’t hear about it before because I feel like that stuff usually comes across in the things I read but anyway I was excited to learn about it now.

Tim: Yeah.

Amanda: What about you Tim? Did you know about it?

Tim: I knew about the story, did not know about the documentary until you told me about it Amanda. And I believe you just typed it to me, we were just messaging about it and I let out an audible gasp like, “There’s a documentary about this? I need to see it.”

Amanda: Yeah.

Tim: So I immediately watched it and decided we needed to record a podcast. So it did answer one of my, I don’t know lingering questions about the whole thing was just seeing like… I always wondered how they were able to fool people into thinking like, “This is an actual Rothko, this is a Pollock.” And then they show those paintings in the doc and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m fooled.”

They really, really look realistic.

Amanda: Oh, they fooled the experts too, so . . .

Tim: I know. And so I guess that kind of leads into my next question for both of you. The forgery, the selling of the work, the backstory that all seemed like a pretty elaborate con so a couple of questions. Amanda, I’ll ask you first, did you think the artwork was believable? Visually, could you be convinced that, that painting was a Rothko or a Pollock or a Motherwell? And then secondly, do you think the story of where the artwork came from the provenance as they called it? Did you think that was believable?

Amanda: Okay. Well, I might get into a critique of this documentary in my answer but first of all were they believable? I want to say no, of course they weren’t believable because I’m an art teacher and I know a lot about art history. Of course, they were believable yes, I’ve seen those works of those artists in person right out of museum but I don’t know what kind of pigment they use. I have a general idea of what a Rothko looks like, I don’t have his whole catalog memorize. Yes, I think to anybody looking at that painting who didn’t have a super in-depth background, I think they would be believable so. And also then we later learned that they were made by a literal master painter.

Tim: Yes.

Amanda: And so like the person creating them also had the skill to mimic them so yes, I think they were believable. The story, no. Well, I want to say no but this is where we wish they would have gone into a little bit more detail. In this high art world I wanted to know more about that. I guess you could tell me that it was believable or I might believe it if you told me that there were often super-rich people who wanted to stay anonymous when they sold their art, right. Maybe that happens I don’t know.

Tim: Yeah.

Amanda: And I wish that they told us a little bit more about that but the fact that there was literally no trace of it and it was so ambiguous.

Tim: Oh, it’s just, yeah he bought them from the studio New York then they ended up in Mexico and now they’re back.

Amanda: Yeah, a giant red flag, the biggest red flag, yeah.

Tim: Yeah. So Abby, what about you? Thoughts on the painting or thoughts on the story behind the painting?

Abby: Well, I thought the part was hilarious when they were talking about you have all of these art experts in the courtroom during the trial and they have one of the fake Rothkos’ and they know that it’s fake and they had it there and they were all like, “Do you think it goes this direction or this direction?” And we’re all sitting there, we know it’s a fake but we’re like, “If this were a Rothko, which direction, which is taking?” So that was kind of funny but yeah, I don’t know the elaborate story on Mr. X all-

Amanda: You’re like Mr. X? That’s the name you chose? That is out of a bad spy novel. What? I don’t know.

Abby: Maybe if I didn’t know it was going to be this sense of fraud, maybe I would believe it but not those people in that position no way. No way, should you have believed that but like I said, I guess we don’t curate art, we don’t. We’re not selling them so, yeah I don’t know. There are some things that I just siting on, I don’t understand.

Amanda: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Amanda: I want to say that Tim thinks that he wouldn’t be able to tell that they were fake.

Abby: I think he could.

Tim: No. They fooled me, as soon as they put visuals in the studio I was like, “Oh, okay I see. I was there’s no way I would be able to tell that apart.” If you put up real Rothko versus fake Rothko, no clue.

Amanda: Right.

Tim: No clue. I’m a huge Rothko fan but I could not have told if that, yeah whether that was or not. So no I would have been a 100% fooled. Okay, so I also want to talk though about some of the main characters. I feel like there are what? Four main characters? But let’s chat about Bergantiños and Pei-Shen Qian, I don’t know if I’m saying that exactly right. But it seems like they both, for lack of a better phrase got away with it. Bergantiños ended up in… He’s the shady grifter dude, he just ended up in Spain and our master painter ended up in China and they both just kind of seem to be living their life. So Amanda, what did you think about seeing them and where they are right now?

Amanda: I think it was really funny when like for Bergantiños was in doing an interview and he was about to answer his question and his lawyer is off screen and he’s like, “No, don’t say anything.” It’s obvious he’s wrapped up in this, it’s obvious that he played a huge part and did a bad thing. And I don’t know it seems like a super sweet deal for him.

Tim: Yeah.

Amanda: It just seems like he has literally no consequences and again I wish they would’ve gone into a little bit more detail about why?

Because he wasn’t going to be extradited back or whatever, okay but like why? And why wasn’t he in trouble with anybody anywhere? Why couldn’t he be in trouble? That’s probably just me not knowing how laws work that fully but seems unfair to me.

Tim: Right. It’s the epitome of white-collar crime, his entire punishment is, “Sorry you have to live in this mansion and spend the rest of your days.” His only consequence is he can’t travel back to the United States, that it.

Amanda: Right, exactly.

Abby: That’s why you should read the book because there’s more of those details in it.

Amanda: Ooh, wow.

Tim: Okay.

Amanda: Okay.

Abby: I kind of felt that the documentary was a little bit slow in the regards of, I know Amanda we are going to critique the documentary a little bit. Because the story was, it didn’t take me 90 minutes to read the story about it.

Amanda: Right.

Abby: But I did really appreciate the suspenseful score and music in it.

But there was just like a lot of pausing behind it like when Ann Freedman was talking is like, I’m just like we just going to stare at her for a little bit longer but there are some more details within the book there that kind of like build those characters a little bit more about who they are which-

Amanda: Right, because it’s like how much did the painter know? Did he know that they were being sold for this much money? It seems not, seems like he was still living in a regular house and everyone else was making $10 million.

Tim: Right. But is that just his excuse though.

Amanda: What?

Tim: Did he actually squirrel away a whole bunch of money and then when the police came . . . He just throws up his hands and like, “I had no idea this was happening.”

Abby: So this is my theory. So with a Pei-Shen?

Amanda: Mm-hmm(affirmative).

Tim: Yes.

Amanda: His story he came to New York first, he went to art school. Did the schooling in like the eighties then went back to Shanghai, was renowned in the world of modern artwork-

Abby: They, they credit him for bringing back modern Chinese art. They had this huge exhibit that he was a part of. And so then you came back to New York he’s like, “Okay, I kind of have this clout or whatever,” and brought it back to New York city where he’s like, “Okay, I’m going to make it as an artist again.” But then turns out that was a lot harder for him, he started pedaling paintings on the street just as like selling street paintings and that’s how he got discovered. So I think it started out of a need of, “Oh, these people are going to pay me to do something? Sure.”

Amanda: Yeah.

Abby: But then they talk about, so I think that maybe at first he didn’t know but then-

Amanda: He had to, remember the nails labeled as everything go nails. How you take your coffee sleep trying to copy.

Abby: When he was doing this in the late ’90s or in the ’90s there’s no way just because you’re from China I don’t think if you’re living in America during that time, would you really not know who Jackson Pollock is? Would you really not know who Mark Rothko is? Because he claimed like he didn’t know who these artists were but he’s able to just copy them.

Tim: Yeah, I know.

Abby: So I don’t think he necessarily knew what he was in for at the beginning but I don’t think he was making very much money at the beginning until you saw it and you’re like wait, “You’re selling that for $10,000 and you’re giving me a couple 100?” And so I think that was kind of the turning point where it was like, “Okay, I’ve been doing this for a while, I’ve already been into it. Where’s my cut?” Right.

Amanda: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah. All right. So those two guys seem to kind of get away with it just from playing dumb.

Amanda: Oblivious.

Tim: Or denying any culpability and somehow Glafira took the fall for everybody and I’m not saying she’s innocent.

Abby: No.

Tim: Because she’s obviously not, but it seems unfortunate that the hammer came down on her and not on anybody else. So Abby, what did you think about that?

Abby: Yeah, I agree with that just because it’s like, come on. Yeah, she was definitely a mastermind in all of this and all of her people but she wasn’t working alone and then just to it kind of… The documentary did a good job of like you hated her, they painted her as a bad person at the beginning. But then you kind of feel bad for her at the end and then it’s like, “Okay, of where everybody else is out now where it’s living a normal life she, yeah she lost the most. And was the only one who lost everything, yeah. And she didn’t prefer that much jail time but still she doesn’t have all of her money, artwork.

Amanda: I think she’s working as a waitress.

Tim: Yeah.

Amanda: Right now too. And she was formarly a millionaire, that’s crazy.

Tim: Yeah, that’s a little rough.

Abby: And I and Ann Freedman for drawing gallery now so.

Tim: Well, we will talk about Ann Freedman. Amanda, do you have anything to say about Glafira before we move on to Ann?

Amanda: Well, I kind of wondered too we didn’t really hear about her motive for it. And so I’m wondering was there an underlying coercion from Bergantiños? Was she being threatened? Or was she, I don’t know maybe not, maybe she’s just a bad person but maybe she was also in a really bad situation or maybe it was kind of a combination. I wish they had dug into that story a little bit more because everybody wants money, but what is the driving motivation behind this enormous con?

Tim: Yeah. I think for me that’s kind of the big hole in the doc.

Amanda: Yeah.

Tim: Is like they obviously couldn’t get an interview with her and so we don’t.

Amanda: Right.

Tim: We don’t hear her part of the story at all.

Abby: Well, and also it leads you to believe like, “Okay, is this the first one that happened with these artists?”

Tim: Yeah.

Abby: Did this group of people do more?

Tim: Right.

Abby: Beause obviously they were good at it which if they got caught.

Amanda: Right.

Abby: I don’t know.

Tim: Yeah. It makes you look with suspicion anytime they’re like new painting by X artists discovered, “Well it’s on shaky ground, should we believe this or not?”

Abby: Yeah.

Tim: So I don’t know. Okay, we need to talk about Ann Freedman though. I have a lot to say, so . . .

Amanda: You go first.

Abby: Yeah, you first.

Tim: Okay, it might take me a little bit. So I don’t know, Ann came across in the documentary to me as just so incredibly guilty. She denied all of her involvement, she didn’t seem to get punished for this but yet I am 100% convinced she knew 100% of what was going on. The entire time she talks like a lawyer has coached her, the entire time and never is there any like May Cooper like, “Oh, I’m sorry this happened.” It’s always excuses.

It reminds me of a kid in your class who has gotten in trouble like, “Hey, Cody you’ve punched that kid 14 straight days.” And Cody never says that he’s sorry, he’s always like, “Well, Spencer was punching kids too and did you see Addy because she kicked that kid and also Mrs. Snow lets us punch people in her class.” Always excuses, there’s never, “I am sorry.” Never any responsibility and it just frustrated the heck out of me because she just had an excuse for everything like, “Well, I talked to this guy about it. I got a letter from this appraiser about this.” And just never ever, ever like, “Oh yeah, after selling 14 of those, after selling 26 of those that are all forgeries, I’m just going to keep accepting paintings from these people.” And it blows my mind and I know people are like, “Oh, she’s innocent until proven guilty.”

And then we actually get to the trial and she’s about to be found guilty and guess what? She just up and leaves. It’s like, “Oh, I need to settle actually.” She just doesn’t show up to court for two days and then settles out of court and it just blows my mind. As you can tell, I’m very frustrated and I’ll just say this the only excuse she can have for that is either A, I’m really bad at my job or B, I’m too dumb to do my job. And yet what is her job? She is still selling art! I don’t know how anyone could work with her at this point. And so anyway I’m not a fan of Ann Freedman well, it’s just unbelievable what happens.

Abby: No, she’s a little shady. Yeah, obviously she probably was once really up, she must be great at her job as far as knowing something but there’s a funny thing about her. So when in the documentary just a little bit they talked about like having the Rothko experts come in and make sure that they’re authentic and things. So they didn’t mention this in the documentary I don’t think. So one weird thing about in the initial investigation is that Ann Freedman talks about she’s like, “Well, I even bought a Jackson Pollock paintings, that one of these forged ones but turns out Pollock was misspelled.” It was one of the forgeries okay it was one of the forgeries and she was like, “Oh, I didn’t notice it. I didn’t notice it until after the fact.” And I was like, “Excuse me what?

Amanda: Okay. I have a little bit different take. I feel like she started off not knowing. I think she wanted so badly to believe it because that would skyrocket her into this new realm of her position and her title and her provenance and her whatever. And I think she got stuck in the sunk cost fallacy, right of economics where you just keep investing time in something even though it’s a terrible idea and you can’t not do it anymore even though you know it’s a worse and worse and worse idea.

I think she got so far deep into it that she couldn’t pull herself out and became terrible at her job and willing to overlook anything including misspellings and huge glaring red flags. She was still terrible at her job in my mind and I would never buy a painting from her ever but I don’t know, I’m not convinced that she was a criminal mastermind. I think she got in over her head and then became blind to anything because she needed so badly to believe it that she just let it go on for so long. That’s my take.

Tim: But why is there no remorse? Why is there no responsibility then? She’s not a good person.

Amanda: No, I didn’t say she was a good person. I just, yeah something’s clearly off there like her demeanor and whatever but I think maybe she’s mad at herself that she let herself do that or she can’t, I don’t know, if she admits she was wrong she admits she was so dumb. So she doesn’t want to admit, she wants to think that everything lined up and anybody would have believed it even though if there was anyone who shouldn’t have believed it, it would have been her in her position.

Abby: But it was also really wild when they did the breakdown of the numbers as far as-.

Amanda: Yeah, how much.

Abby: If the painting sells, this is what the painting sells for. And then this is what the gallery gets and then her commission fee was like $10 million.

Amanda: It’s true.

Abby: I was like, “I’m in the wrong business.”

Tim: Oh man. I just can’t imagine just living a life of lies like that for so long, it’s too much.

Amanda: Right. Won’t it eat you alive? That’s why I think she believed it. How do you live with that for 20 years knowing it any moment. But I think deep down she did know.

Tim: Oh, she knew.

Amanda: And that’s why she was scared. And that’s why she kept believing.

Tim: She knew.

Abby: Or maybe she didn’t know at first, maybe she didn’t first but then there was a point that she did know and then, yeah. What do you do? How do you go back from there?

Tim: Yeah that’s rough.

Amanda: Obviously you just can, you just settle out of court and then open a new gallery.

Abby: But who were the other people, the de Soles?

“The only time I forget about her, the only time, the only time I think about her is when I see her drinking coffee and bread bun.”

Amanda: Yeah. But I also was not a real big fan of that duo either.

Abby: No I didn’t believe them and I didn’t feel bad for them.

Amanda: No absolutely.

Tim: No.

Abby: So that’s a different topic but.

Amanda: Yeah. We don’t have time to get into them but for the record.

Abby: Not fair.

Tim: All right. So I want to wrap this up really quickly and then talk to us a little bit about maybe how these ideas can move into our classroom. So just two to wrap this up, just maybe one or two sentences about the doc overall. What did you think of it? Would you recommend it? Was there anything that you really thought was missing? I’m sorry to put you on the spot here, Abby I’ll send it to you first. What’s your quick overview of the doc?

Abby: If you don’t know the story it’s definitely worth the watch. It’s intriguing because they are painters that we all use in our classrooms as art teachers, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko those are the main focuses there. We all have that kind of basic knowledge of those artists. So it’s interesting to see that a little bit in this perspective. And especially like we talked about at the beginning, I know this is more than two sentences. I’m just we think about art crime and things like stolen art, the Mona Lisa got stolen again. And like this stuff is happening all the time that we don’t know about especially in this modern age of technology and everything too. So it’s a different story for us that, yeah it’s definitely good for anybody who’s interested in art.

Tim: Yeah.

Amanda: Okay, my two sentences are, it wasn’t good. You should watch it. No, but really for me so my husband watched it with me and he is not an art person he’s a software engineer. And we had such an interesting discussion afterwards like what is art? What makes art good? If no one had ever found out that these were fake, everyone would be so happy to have a Rothko in their house or a Pollock in their house. So what makes Pollock better than the guy who copied him if the guy who copied him made a passable fake? Is one of them a better artists than the other? Is it really more about the ideas than whatever. We just had a really interesting discussion so I think it’s definitely worth a watch.

Tim: Yeah. I would say it’s 90 minutes well spent and there’s so much more I want to dive into. I want to read that book that Abby recommended, I want to read a bunch about the trials and I want to just even spend some time thinking about those questions that you brought up Amanda, and also just the differences between what is appreciated in China versus what is appreciated in America.

Amanda: Yeah.

Tim: In terms of originality and skill and, yeah just all of where is your expertise? And I think that’s fascinating to me and worth thinking about. So, okay we’re talking to art teachers here so we do need to bring this back to the classroom. So Abby, I’m going to send it to you first, how would you use something like this in your classroom? I know you wrote that article about art forgeries but can you talk about how you use some of those ideas in the article? Or how you’d use this documentary with your students?

Abby: Yeah. Well, I’m a storyteller when I’m with my students and I love just there’s so many things in history that occurred that happened to be related to art that sometimes people don’t realize. So anytime you can kind of bring those in like I know for my eighth grade students, one of the things that’s in the curriculum is they talk about the Holocaust and it’s when they come in and I know they’re talking about it I’m always waiting for it. I’m like, “How do you talk about the Nazis and you don’t talk about art at all or any of that?” So finding those opportunities to kind of bring some of that in because even in this book too there’s some different stories about the Nazis and art that, and fraud with some of those stories that we don’t know that goes a little bit more beyond than just like the Monuments Men that people kind of know about.

But yeah, just any I know we don’t want to encourage our students to be like, “Yeah, you should forge art like working department, that’s not good.” But those are the hooks and the intriguing stories that gets our students interested or might even remember something. So one just quickly, one kind of fun artists, there’s so many fun stories. There was this artist, Wolfgang Beltracchi maybe how i said he was a German artist I think well, German forger. So he would forge a bunch of artwork that was in not listed in the catalogs or they’d be marked as missing so nobody knew what they look like.

Amanda: You wouldn’t make them.

Abby: And so, one of the artists that he would in personate so like Max Ernst, so he would just go through and he made up all of these paintings. So they technically, they weren’t copies, he was inventing his own in the styles of all of these great artists.

Tim: Wow.

Abby: But they pass them off as his own. Obviously, he was selling these for millions of dollars. And he did go to prison not for very long though but then turns out he’s a successful artists now for his own artwork because he made a name for himself by forging this stuff. And then now it’s like, “Oh, okay.” So it turned out well for him. But the things about his stories were like, they would go so talking about the backstory of where these paintings would come from, he would go in his family was in on the con, they would fake these Old CPA tinted photos to make them look old fashioned. And they’d be like, “Oh, these paintings have been part of our family history for so long. Look, here’s my grandmother in this old photo.” And they’d have like the painting in the background.

Tim: Oh, my God.

Abby: On the wall, but it was really just his wife dressed up.

Amanda: Wow.

Abby: And it was like-

Amanda: At least he made an attempt to fake the provenance as well as the art.

Abby: Oh, yes.

Amanda: A step above this other con.

Abby: Yes and it turned out well for Wolfgang but as you know now you could buy… He makes a living out of being an artist even after having all of his lawsuits and jail time and everything. So those are the stories that are so fun to bring in with your students because it’s just, yeah you get to talk about art history, art appreciation and just it makes for a good conversation and that’s kind of what we’re there for in the classroom to make those connections to hopefully have students create that appreciation for art.

Tim: Yeah, for sure. Amanda, do you have anything to add?

Amanda: I think this could provide some really cool writing prompts especially for older kids. Like why is art so expensive? Do you think it’s easier to forge an abstract expressionist painting? Or a Renaissance painting, right? What would you do in if you were in any of these people’s positions? I think it just gives so much insight into the art world for students. We’re used to sort of addressing and talking about the formal properties of a painting or the artistic merit of something but this goes deeper into the business side of art, which I think is really interesting and something that kids don’t usually have access to and so I think this is like a cool end point for them. And I also think it could be a super fun jumping off point for a project where they literally have to be inspired by them copy an artist’s work to learn a technique as a way to do that. I think that could be super cool as well.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, a lot of great ideas there but we’re going to go ahead and wrap it up. So Abby and Amanda, thank you both so much this was a lot of fun and next time we have a good art documentary, I’ll have you back and we can discuss again.

Amanda: Excellent. Thanks Tim.

Tim: Thank you to Abby and too Amanda for those incredible ideas on how you can bring a lot of these stories, storytelling and just the history of art fraud into your art room and thanks for the entire conversation. We will make sure we link in the show notes to the book that Abby mentioned to the podcast that Amanda talked about to Abby’s article all about dealing with art fraud and forgeries and how you can bring that into your classroom because I think there’s a lot to explore and I hope I do that. So I would love to hear your thoughts on Ann Freedman or anybody else so feel free to email me. I love chatting about these docs and everything that I’ve seen and I love telling stories about their world. So if you have a take or an opinion feel free to send that to me. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the conversation and we will talk to you next week.

Art Ed Radio is produced by The Art of Education university with audio engineering by Michael Crocker. Thank you as always for listening.