From 17 December 2021 - 12 June 2022

Misleiden - Fakes in art and science

• Visit the digital exhibition

Real or fake? That's the question in Misleiden - Fakes from art and science. Stroll offline and online past more than twenty objects from nine Leiden collections that put you on the wrong track. Now on display at Museum De Lakenhal and via digital platform Things That Talk. Do you dare to believe your eyes?

Whether an art object is real or fake is not always easy to say. Sometimes the desire for an object to be real takes over: then a researcher or enthusiast may have struck gold. We want something to be real, even if we can hardly believe our eyes.

SPECIAL FORGERIES

What are counterfeiters' motivations for doing what they do? And if an object is indistinguishable from the real thing, isn't it a work of art in itself? These questions are central to the exhibition Misleiden, with which Leiden institutions offer a look behind the scenes of researchers and curators. The exhibition includes, for example, a stingray disguised as a dragon, a forged relief tile and a very cleverly copied eye.rence Brave New World and Fresco Sam-Sin of the digital platform Things That Talk, who is also a guest curator of the physical exhibition.

Collaborations

The exhibition is a special collaboration of nine Leiden institutions: the objects come from the collections of Museum De Lakenhal, het Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Naturalis, Museum van Volkenkunde and Japan Museum SieboldHuis. There are also contributions from Leiden University Library, het Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten (NINO) en Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken. The collaborative project is an initiative of Alexander Mouret of the annual confe