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Comment by c22 | Hacker News Reader

But as a museum they're not concerned with merely presenting an aesthetic experience (that would be a gallery), but also with preserving and displaying an accurate slice of history. I tend to agree with you that there should be no problem with "fake" works of art being displayed in a museum, but it would be rather disconcerting to find out that 50% of any museum's exhibits were grossly historically inaccurate or misattributed.

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Visitors truly did see a slice of history - this will go down in history, itself, as a great fraud that you can no longer experience.

The curators at the Museum of Art Fakes are already hard at work preserving this tasty morsel of history.

Even more so in that case as it's a museum dedicated to a specific painter from the village.

I'd probably make it more interesting to keep the fakes. You could make it a game for visitors to guess which is which.

Both the UK and US (and probably other countries) have museums in their capitals called the "National Gallery". Are they galleries or museums? Does the distinction even make sense?

In this case very much so, the museum is dedicated to a painter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne_Terrus) not an aesthetic.

For other cases it can depend on the purpose of the building and the collection. If it's about the art itself it's a gallery, if it's about the artistic movement and its historicity it's a museum.

I totally understand that this museum is interested only in works by a particular artist, and so fakes are unwanted even if they are good art. My point is you seemed to be making a distinction between the idea of a "gallery" and "museum", implying that galleries are interested as art-as-art and museums with art-as-historical artifact.

often, you can buy the works placed in a gallery, while museums you cannot. also, usyally, galleries have rotating stock depending on events etc, whereas museums have storage they rotate out of. additionally, galleries are not, most of the time, focused on non-contemporary artists and works, while museums have a substantial historical focus.

there is a distinction, thats why there are different words. outliers and exceptions not withstanding, since words and their meanings do not force their usage.

to be an accurate slice of history, fakes are important! how else are you going to know who was making fakes of the artist and when?

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