Of Fakes and Fakers

Eugène Boban’s passion for educating others about the significance of the broad range of objects he amassed and sold was especially evident with pre-Columbian artifacts, his particular area of expertise. As the years passed, this passion to educate became increasingly entangled with a desire to analyze and unmask fake artifacts. However, the more he writes about fakes, the harder it becomes to distinguish between revelations made as a public service from other, more self-serving interests, such as spiting colleagues, covering his own sale of fakes, or bragging about how cleverly he has fooled the “experts.” Boban began to write about