Don't be fooled: fake news about museums

The most shocking, stupid and funny artistic fake news of recent years.

At the beginning of January, news spread on the Internet that feminists had brought into the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin’s ax and ladder, they tried to castrate a copy of Michelangelo’s “David,” but they failed and were injured by the tools they brought. It was immediately obvious to anyone who loves museums that this news was fake. If only because it is impossible to carry an ax and a ladder through metal detectors and security, and also because Moscow museums were closed to the public due to quarantine. We decided to compile for you a list of other ridiculous news that used to be called newspaper ducks.

"Scream" and Roman Abramovich

In June 2020, a message appeared on the Sotheby’s Life Telegram channel, which is not the official channel of the auction house, that one of the versions of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch was purchased at Sotheby’s for $120 million by Roman Abramovich. No evidence was provided for this, but the news was quickly disseminated by many news portals, and along the way it acquired details - for example, that this money will be used to develop the tourism business in Norway. In the end, it turned out that we were talking about an auction purchase eight years ago, made by a completely different millionaire. However, thanks to the name of Roman Abramovich, the excitement in RuNet was enormous, some even demanded that he transfer “The Scream” to the Tretyakov Gallery.

Seattle Museum and Racism

Fake news is sensitive to the political situation. Last summer, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, a press release was sent out from a fake email address. It stated that the Seattle Art Museum's board of directors had voted to dissolve itself and that the museum would henceforth be run by a coalition of local BIPOC, or ethnic minority, arts organizations. The museum had to officially deny this information. The funny thing is that at the end of the fake press release it was written that it was fake. But no one read this far.

Mystical doll and showcase

The famous rag doll named Annabelle is the star of the horror films of the Conjuring and Annabelle franchise. For decades it has been kept in the Warren Occult Museum in Connecticut, and Americans believe that the doll has paranormal powers. Therefore, on the carefully locked display case it is written: “Do not open!” In August 2020, the internet exploded with rumors that Annabelle had escaped from the museum. Its owner had to record a special video message refuting this rumor.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and the Tretyakov Gallery

In January 2019, shortly after the theft of a painting by Arkhip Kuindzhi from the Tretyakov Gallery, artist and member of the Pussy Riot group Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, speaking on television, stated that she, too, once stole an exhibit from this museum, but did not say which one specifically. “We were looking at several paintings for ourselves in the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val and in the end we stole something, but it was smaller, so it didn’t cause such a scandal... No one contacted us about this. It’s still hanging on our wall now, but I won’t say where... The curators there were just constantly changing, at that moment, in my opinion, the curator of the department of newest trends was Andrei Erofeev, and the one who now apparently doesn’t understand anything about art.” The press service of the Tretyakov Gallery wisely called this a “desire to promote themselves,” but politely promised to investigate the issue.

Carl Gustav Mannerheim and St. Petersburg

In October 2019, the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg had to refute the news that it allegedly initiated the creation in the city of a museum of Carl Gustav Mannerheim, a former general of the Russian army who acted under the name Gustav Karlovich Mannerheim, the Finnish commander-in-chief, sadly remembered by Leningraders for his participation in the siege. The news, previously disseminated by the city media, was apparently generated by the news that the buildings of the Stables Department, where Mannerheim once lived, were to be restored. The interiors of his five-room apartment have been partially preserved there. Another component: nearby, on one of the buildings of the Cavalry Guard Regiment barracks, for four months in 2016 there was a memorial plaque dedicated to him, which had to be dismantled due to protests from the townspeople.

The Mummy and the Rapist

In January 2016, the internet was abuzz with the news that 44-year-old Smithsonian Institution security guard James Monroe had been arrested for having sex with an ancient Egyptian mummy on display. It was reported that the museum management handed over CCTV footage to the police. As in the case of “David” at the Pushkin Museum, the source of the fake news was a satirical “news agency” website, on the main page of which there is a disclaimer written in black and white and a warning that this is only humor. However, no one ever pays attention to the authorship... The same site, called World News Daily Report, was the source of the news in November 2020 that a security guard at the same institute, for money, allowed people into the exhibit at night and allowed them to have sex with dinosaur fossils. And news in July 2019 that an employee at Dinosaur National Monument contracted a sexually transmitted disease from a dinosaur egg. From there - that in 2014, dinosaurs hatched in a Berlin museum... They repeat themselves, in general.

Toilet and visitor

Fake news can often be identified by its very monotonous type of humor. In 2007, a private Museum of the History of the Toilet opened in Kyiv. Immediately, news spread in the press that 48-year-old museum visitor Vasily Kovalchuk used one of the exhibits for its intended purpose. The press service had to refute the rumor. However, wasn’t this part of the PR campaign that accompanied the opening?

The article was published in The Art Newspaper Russia in January 2021.

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2. Munch, "The Scream", fake