Art Fakes: How Do You Spell “Idiot”?

When angry collectors started suing Knoedler & Company for selling dozens of multimillion-dollar forgeries, the gallery’s former president, Ann Freedman, insisted that she and her colleagues had had no reason to think that any of the paintings were counterfeit. Oh, really? Newly released documents in a continuing civil case show that at least one of the works bought in 2000 by Freedman herself contained a prominent clue that something was awry. The artist’s signature was spelled Pollok instead of Pollock.

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