Forgeries are hurting the art market – but I'd buy ones this good

Valuable paintings have recently been declared fakes, spreading fear through the world art market. But if they are fakes, I may be on the side of the forgers

How can you tell when the art market is terrified? Perhaps when a leading auction house sets up its own forensic department, so it can offer art collectors the additional reassurance of a battery of scientific tests when they fork out hundreds of thousands, or even millions, on a painting that may be a masterpiece – or may be a fake. Sotheby’s New York has recently done just that. It has purchased the research company Orion Analytical, whose forensic knowledge will now be part of its own brand.

Sotheby’s has good reason to buttress its expertise with objective scientific tests on such crucial clues as the age of the materials a work of art contains. For there is a crisis in the art trade. Allegations of forgeries are proliferating in a way that is troubling to think about.

Related: Was the National Gallery scammed with a fake Old Master painting?

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