Affresco

MUSEO D' ARTE E SCIENZA (P.za Castello)
via Q. Sella,4 -20121 Milano-
Info: Tel:+390272022488 e-mail: info@museoartescienza.com

The present Museo d’Arte e Scienza was founded in 1990 as a didactic museum with the purpose of helping art collectors distinguish authentic items in all fields of antiques from copies and fakes. For this purpose have been added to the exhibition some clearly indicated non authentic objects.

Some of the objects on exhibit came from the teaching collection of a renowned school of art opened in Dresden, Germany, in 1906 by the Kurau and Matthaes families.

The "African" collection of this school, which represents the core of the 300 objects displayed, was put together in the years between 1906 and 1926, when Dresden, famous for its artistic traditions, was the capital of modern European painting.

This collection of the Milan Museum, with its documented 100-year history, is therefore one of the oldest in Europe.

( more details on www.Matthaes.org )

Acknowledged value
of the museum’s scientific laboratory and its methods
for determining authenticity

Attitudes towards and use of scientific methods are influenced by local laws and customs.

Basis of judgment: the situation in Italy (where the museum is located)

The prime institution for the fight against forgery and imitations is the Guardia di Finanza or Financial Police. The most recent catalogue on the determination of authenticity in art, published by the same in June 2007, contains an exclusive six-page presentation of the scientific laboratory of the Museo d’Arte e Scienza in which its methods for dating paintings, furniture, and objects in ivory and other materials are illustrated in detail and their validity, in effect, endorsed.

Judicial proceedings. The probatory value of the spectroscopic dating method is crucial to the outcome of civil and penal judgments involving the determination of the actual age of art works.

The art market: the percentage of unauthentic art works currently on the market is very high. As a consequence a section of the trade rejects scientific methods out of economic necess