The pastiche, the fake, and the authentic: from Stendahl Galleries to the world

Starting about 1940, the Stendahl Galleries of Hollywood, California, acquired 1000s of objects of prehispanic Mexico.  They sold many works to other dealers; they sold objects to the extended Hollywood scene, including John Huston, Vincent Price, Edgar G. Robinson, and Zero Mostel; directly or indirectly, they sold objects to museums, among them the Gilcrease Institute, the Portland Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.  Through Stendahl and his network of other dealers, collections were formed that included exemplary materials from Aztec, Maya, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, and other cultures.  But were these objects all authentic? This talk will look at some of the challenges presented by these materials today.