April Fakes Day
In museums across Oxford and London
April Fakes Day 2025
This year’s April Fakes Day the focus will be the fakers, fraudsters and those who fooled. Who are the people who fake? What motivates them? Just how they manage to fool?
In collaboration with Professor Patricia Kingori (Oxford Population Health’s Ethox Centre) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), museums and art organisations across the UK, will spotlight the people who dare to fake and those who have successfully fooled.
Through a series of exciting exhibitions and activities across museums across the UK, a diverse array of artifacts and activities will examine the people behind the fakes. Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum will host a conversation with John Myatt - described as one of the most prolific art forgers of the 20th Century, discussing why he forged and his views on art experts. Meanwhile, at the Thackray Museum, Leeds the quacks who shaped medicine will be on display. At Pitts Rivers Museum, Oxford a workshop will explore the stories behind the hundreds of copies, casts, replicas and fakes in their collection prompt questions about the fakers and forgers. In London, the Society of Antiquaries, one of the world’s oldest learned societies will explore the infamous forgers in the Victorian era. The Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford will have a special screening of the Third Man with Q&A and Parasite focusing on the charisma and appeal of fraudsters.
April Fakes Day serves as an opportunity to engage with the complexities of fakery and its role in shaping our understanding of reality.
April Fakes Day 2024
April Fakes Day 2024 was a pan-museum initiative led by Professor Patricia Kingori and supported by TORCH which explored fakes and forgeries in museums, galleries and more. Taking place 1 – 7 April 2024, it subverted the tradition of April Fools’ Day to promote engagement and discussion on the subject of what is fake and some of the complexities of identifying what is real. The initiative was a huge success and received considerable regional and national media coverage, including the Oxford Mail. Prof. Kingori was interviewed on 1 April on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, and on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast show. In 2024, 5.6 million tuned in for The Today programme. BBC Radio 5 Live reached 5.4m listeners.
One of the most pressing questions of our times relates of questions of authenticity and these questions permeate all areas of social life. Professor Kingori’s research explores what can be learnt from different kinds of fakes, from seemingly harmless animals, relics and paintings in museums to more damaging deep fake videos, fake medicines and misinformation that have harmful consequences in the modern world. Her ongoing project, Wellcome-funded Fakes, Fabrications and Falsehoods in Global Health, explores how uncertainty and ambiguity around the authenticity of products are reconciled in practice.
For April Fakes Day Prof Kingori worked with institutions in Oxford and London to encourage audiences to consider the power of fakes, and who gets to decide what is a ‘fake’. Activities included:
- History of Science Museum exhibited falsified medicines from across the globe and created a trail around the museum to raise awareness of fakes in medicine.
- Pitt Rivers Museum ran an event about fakes in the ivory trade, teaching audiences how to tell the real from the fake and what role fakes have played in this trade.
- Ashmolean Museum showcased their case of fake objects.
- Bodleian Library created a display of fakes in their collection including a fake William Shakespeare paper and a fake political petition from apartheid South Africa.
- The Botanic Garden & Arboretum showcased the 1970s ‘spaghetti trees’ hoax on their social media channels.
- The OU Museum of Natural History created a trail to show their replica, faked and falsified specimens. They also hosted a comedy improv event called “Whose Lie Is It Anyway?” which pitted fake professors against real ones.
- The Natural History Museum, London showcased their ‘Jenny Haniver’, a fake mythological creature created by 18th Century sailors to fool unwitting tourists.
-
The Ultimate Picture Palace hosted a screening of Orson Welles’ film F For Fake, with a post-show talk from Prof Kingori, Dr JC Niala and DR Andrew Dunning.
- The Story Museum focused on trickster tales and fake magical creatures in their galleries.
- The V&A Museum ran an event with Prof Kingori and V&A Director of Cultural Heritage Protection and Security Vernon Rapley, about art forgeries.
- The British Museum produced two blog posts – one on forged worked by the artist Katsushika Hokusai, one on a gold alloy called tumbaga which was called ‘fake’ by colonisers of the Americas.
- Uncomfortable Oxford produced a blog post telling the story of how a replica Zimbabwe Bird ended up on Rhodes’ House in Oxford.
- Culture& produced a blog post about the first 3D printed replica of the bust of Egyptian Queen Nefertiti.
- The Black Cultural Archives produced a blog post about the myths surrounding the Windrush Generation.
- The significance of this project is across several areas. Key to this are the new relationships formed between TORCH and institutions such as the British Museum, London Natural History Museum and V&A Museum. Existing relationships with the Ultimate Picture Palace, History of Science Museum and Bodleian Library were also developed by this project, resulting in rust, understanding and respect with all partners.
Museum curators enjoyed looking at their collections from a new perspective, and finding playful ways to engage with the theme (such as the Botanic Garden’s spaghetti trees): “Allowed us to raise important questions about authenticity, restitution of looted heritage and the role that replicas might play in the future”. Audience members were challenged to look at fakes in a different way, and consider the difference between a fake, a replica, and a hoax: “It has adjusted my focus on the relevance of fakes and forgeries for the wider public and the damage to our cultural heritage.”
