Forgers, Fakers, and Publisher-Pirates

Whether print or digital, text or image, artistic or scientific, rare or common, historic or contemporary, most of the content we encounter contains accidental mistakes-ranging from typos to factual errors to errors arising from prejudicial assumptions-and a significant proportion of it also contains deliberate misinformation resulting from various forms of forgery, fakery, and piracy. This exhibition catalogue introduces the work of notorious and lesser-known forgers, it reveals the various ways in which experts and authors have faked their own identities-ranging from carefully-selected pseudonyms to falsified ethnicities to fraudulent credentials-and it explores a number of shady publishing practices. We can all become better readers and better at protecting ourselves from scammers by improving our understanding of the nature of the content before us.