Books by Nancy Moses

This is a book about authentic fakes, admirable forgeries, and imagined representations of tainted reality: things that are less than meet the eye. Through nine questionable cultural treasures, readers meet those who make, sell, and buy fakes, and through these, explore their own views about what's real, what's fake, and why they should care.

Weaving the stories of the object, its original owner, and the often idiosyncratic institution where the object resides, this book reveals the darkest secret of the cultural world the precarious balance of art, culture, and politics that keep items, for decades, lost in the museum.