Fancy Galleries, Fake Art
Reveal
The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
4.7 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2025
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the mid-’90s, two high-end New York art galleries began selling one fake painting after another – works in the style of Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko and others. It was the largest art fraud in modern U.S. history, totaling more than $80 million. Our first story looks at how it happened and why almost no one ever was punished by authorities.
Our second story revisits an investigation into a painting looted by the Nazis during World War II. More than half a century later, a journalist helped track it down through the Panama Papers.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2020.
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