>a "professional appreciators of art" is just a salesman.  The people who 
>buy are
> investors.  You and I are true art appreciators.

You are right, but I am speaking of art-museums, too. Here in Europe most 
museums are in possession of the state - the people working and teaching 
there do not win or lose by their opinion of paintings. Still, their 
opinions do shift for invalid reasons. If you praise a picture for muted 
colours, you should not praise the very same picture later for vibrant 
ones - the exact opposite.

The same goes for forgeries. In Berlin's national gallery of arts they have 
a painting called "Man with golden Helmet", a painting praised as a 
masterpiece of Rembrandt, a painting "embodying the style of baroque", THE 
piece of pride of the whole gallery.

After highly specialized research involving x-rays and more it was shown 
that the painting was not painted by Rembrandt himself, but by an unknown 
pupil of Rembrandt. And, lo and behold, the famous painting was not so good 
anymore, and they wanted to remove it from the collection.

Well - the painting was old and of the period, done within Rembrandt's 
workshop. Either it always looked good and was and is still a masterpiece or 
it always did not look good and was never a masterpiece at all. It should 
not matter who actually painted the thing - the artistic merit should either 
have been there or not, regardless of the painter. All else has nothing to 
do with art itself.

Same goes for forgeries: if a forgery is so good it cannot be distinguished 
by a visual inspection of professionals, the result is as good or bad as the 
original. When a forgery is so good that it has been exhibited in a museum, 
it should not matter if it is "genuine" or not - the picture should speak 
for itself.

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