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| Sadigh Ancient Art (Yelp) |
A massive forgery scheme has been exposed, and it all began with the discoveries of a University of Iowa art history professor and graduate student when they discovered over 90 fake artifacts in an exhibit at the Hoover museum.* Innumerable artifacts forged, thousands of dollars defrauded, and countless individuals and businesses deceived — without the discoveries of a University of Iowa professor and graduate student, it all may never have been unearthed. In April 2019 ...How disappointed he would be to find out that if he'd done some research for his article - precisely on that "arts" market, he'd quickly come across a whole number of resources warning of the alleged problems with items from the stock of a particular dealer. We could start with the thread "Sadigh: king of fake sellers" thread on the Ancientartifakes Forum of August 11, 2012, detailing (with links, many still active) the efforts of collectors to attract attention to this issue. There was a petition in 2013 - here are some of the comments from it. Dealers, mindful of the fact that their profits are reliant on the market ever-expanding and not contracting, were reporting him wherever they could, afraid that if too many people found out later that they'd bought items that could not be considered genuine, the public would lose confidence in the market in its present no-questions-asked form. There's a pinterest page of 2013 raising some issues. From the same year, there is a cautionary TripAdvisor page reporting problems. Some of the comments on a Yelp page are worth consideration (but look at the positive reviews too). The ICOM International Observatory on Illicit Traffic in Cultural Goods website has since 2013 featured prominently the well-made You Tube video made by a group of collector/dealer activists raising these issues (that I'll embed below if you've not seen it). One buyer was a "James" who bought some things from the dealer back in 2007 - the responses he got from the forum shows this problem was recognised well before 2013. He had already found himself right at the top on the forum's April 18, 2005, list of notorious fake sellers. Interestingly, and presciently, one forum member referred back in 2007 to the dealer's "basement-built antiquities". On Worthpoint there are a series of sales offers that provide information about this dealer (I am not clear who posted these items).
There is actually lots more. As can be seen, the 'core' collecting community - especially in the US at least - was already aware that there were problems with this dealer's objects fifteen years ago, and made an effort to alert potential fellow buyers to this issue. I do not know whether the dealer was reported to anyone at this time, but certainly the information was out there to find - if you look. In 2012-2013, there was a concerted effort to get the dealer closed down by raising awareness and by reporting him. There are many fake sellers in the market, but this one particularly provoked the ire of the collecting community and fellow dealers - part of the reason was the way he allegedly responded, with legal threats.
But this affair shows the inability of the antiquities market to self-regulate itself. The campaign petered out (the petition only got 155 signatures for example) and nobody took any interest, the dealer stayed in business as before, buyers still kept purchasing his stuff, and the Manhattan authorities just let this carry on right under their noses. The same thing happened with Kapoor. The Manhattan authorities turned a blind eye to many years activity right under their noses and only acted when their citizen was arrested in Europe and extradited to India. Then they decided to take their own look into the gallery, and act "surprised" about the scale of what they them (but only then) found.
In the recent case, what seem to be "basement-built antiquities" were openly flogged for three decades (I think it was) and everybody knew what was going on. Dealers were concerned, the rest of us engaged in schadenfreude, when seeing what people were purchasing as antiquities, laughing at the gullible people that stubbornly and pig-headedly ignored the maxim, "first buy the book, then the antiquity".
I do not know how many of the people who were disappointed to be told later that what they had bought were not genuine antiquities and got their money back reported the dealer (in the public interest). But however many it was, it would seem indeed to be the case that the Manhattan DA only took an interest when it was a Presidential Museum that fell indirectly a victim to the process. If that is so, that really shows the pitiful extent that the antiquities market in the US is scrutinised and regulated by the authorities. Think of that the next time the DA get out their decorative tablecloth to display some more antiquities they are "repatriating" as the good guys, with all the speeches and canapes. Here's the video. As far as I know, there was never any response from the gallery showing sample (even) documentation of the legitimate sources from which these antiquities had been obtained. Maybe we'll see it in the court case.
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Posted on You Tube Mar 3, 2013 by '
sadighgalleryfakes', embedding allowed.
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One would like to believe that they picked out the worst from the dealer's stock to make this video. Having seen quite a lot of photos of the items he sells (they are widely posted in collectors' forums and held up for ridicule), I am not so sure. There are obviously a lot of gullible people out there who buy antiquities and are not equipped to understand/interpret/analyse what they have before their eyes, or have in their hands.* I covered this story here.
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