What is Art? Turns Out, It’s Fake

Museums have displayed fakes many times before, and art forgeries have fooled dealers, buyers, and curators alike. But in an already controversial exhibit at the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania, a curator revealed she was the one behind the fakes.

Mona is often described with terms like “shock-and-awe,” “devil-may-care,” or “naughty.” In 2020, the museum opened an installation called Ladies Lounge, curated by artist Kirsha Kaechele, which admitted only women. Kaechele claimed it was inspired by legendary parties thrown by her socialite great-grandmother, where Pablo Picasso himself was an occasional guest. The exhibit was included in the museum’s admission, but an extra $325 would buy a high tea service where, according to its description on the Mona website, “…you are a participant in what [Kaechele] sees as the art itself, part of a living installation.”

The exhibit was meant to be a luxurious experience, said to display paintings by artists like Picasso and Sidney Nolan, antiquities that Kaechele’s grandfather collected while traveling the world, and precious jewelry that belonged to Kaechele’s great-grandmother. In 2024, it drew global attention when an Australian man sued the museum for discrimination. Kaechele treated the resulting court hearing like performance art, arriving with a group of identically dressed supporters and leaving to music. In April, the court ruled that the museum could not exclude men from the Ladies’ Lounge. In response, Kaechele moved the exhibit’s Picasso paintings to a women’s restroom.

If you’re thinking it would be a terrible idea to hang valuable paintings in a public bathroom, don’t worry: Kaechele declared in a recent blog post on the Mona website that they were only copies of Picasso’s works. She had painted them herself. In fact, it seems that everything on display in the Ladies’ Lounge was fake. The antiquities from Kaechele’s grandfather? New. Her great-grandmother’s jewelry? Also new, and many pieces were plastic. The mink rug decorating the room, supposedly made by a royal furrier, was polyester. Kaechele had even made up the stories about her great-grandmother.

Kaechele said in her post that she decided to make these revelations after questions from the UK newspaper The Guardian and from the Picasso Administration. She also expressed surprise that she hadn’t been exposed sooner.

While coverage in The Guardian states that this was not art fraud because Kaechele was not trying to sell the paintings, online commenters, and professional critics alike are divided on the ethics and artistic merit of the exhibit. Is it a clever prank or mere dishonesty? A blow to the public’s trust in museums or a thought-provoking subversion of expectations? The only thing impossible to deny is that the exhibit brought attention to the museum. What’s less clear is whether it is art.

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