If you missed your chance to come to the week-long camp, now’s the time to make up for it! Sign up now at our camp website–that’s also where you can find details on the camp itself. Hope to see you there!

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For those of you scratching your heads wondering who Billy the Kid is; he is the western outlaw also known as William Bonney.  He died by the gun of Sheriff Pat Garrett at age 21. Despite his young age, Kid was said to have killed anywhere between 9 and 21 men. Richardson’s deputy chief of staff Eric Witt wants to clarify that they are not offering a general pardon for all of Kid’s crimes, but rather a pardon for the individual case of killing a sheriff.

Richardson is a known Billy the Kid aficionado, and is considering the pardon because of an alleged promise by Governor Lew Wallace.  He states, “Just think of all the good publicity New Mexico is receiving around the world on this…It’s fun”.  The defining issue revolves around the belief that Wallace promised this pardon in exchange for Kid’s knowledge in a murder case involving three men.  Those who oppose the pardon argue that there is no proof that Governor Wallace ever offered one; he may have simply tricked Kid in to offering up information.  Ancestor William Wallace argues that pardoning Billy the Kid would, “declare Lew Wallace to have been a dishonorable liar”.

Some of those in favor of Kid’s pardon have filed a petition, including defense attorney Randi McGinn who has offered to handle the case for free.  She writes, “A promise is a promise and should be enforced”.  McGinn also says that Wallace assured Kid that he had the authority to exempt him from prosecution should he cooperate and share his knowledge, but that Wallace never held up his end of the deal.

Sheriff Pat Garrett’s grandson, J.P. Garrett, argues that Richardson should have assigned an impartial historian to aid in the case, and believes that McGinn’s involvement may be a conflict of interest.  Richardson appointed Charles Daniels to the state Supreme Court, whom McGinn is married to. William Wallace agrees, also citing that McGinn has, “meager qualifications”.  Despite these accusations, McGinn claims that her only link to the administration is that she offered to handle the case for free because of Richardson’s lifelong interest in Billy the Kid.

Richardson told the Associated Press on Wednesday, “I don’t know where I’ll end up. I might not pardon him. But then I might”.  I guess we’ll just all have to anxiously await the outcome of this deceased outlaw’s judicial fate.

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The driving force of art forgery is the fact that art work created by certain artists is worth more than art work created by others.  If a work of art can be replicated perfectly by an art forger it is only worth less monetarily than the original because of who painted it not because the painting looks any differently than the original.  The same theory applies to forgers who create new art pieces in the style of a master, if the forgery is believed to be genuine it will be deemed priceless but if it is found to be a fake it is deemed worthless, regardless of what the piece of art looks like.

Forensic investigators, along with art historians and appraisers, are often responsible for determining if a piece of art is a forgery or not. Historians often use stylistic analysis to determine if a work of art is genuine or not, possessing large amount of knowledge about the styles, tool, brushstrokes,  techniques used by certain artists. There are a variety of methods used for forensic authentication of art work.   Some of the technical methods for revealing fakes include X-rays, UV lights, and IR light, which can be used to see under layers of paint to see covered up works, determine time period or the actual artist of the painting if an original signature has been covered up.  Chemical analysis and spectral comparisons can detect the components of paint to ensure that modern pigments were not used in supposedly old paintings.  Examination of the craquelure, the network of cracks that appear on old paintings, can be analyzed to ensure that the cracks were not artificially made and that they follow the grain of the wood onto which they were painted.

Art forgery sounds like a thing of the past, but art dealers claim that about 15% of art sold at auctions are fake, which means hundreds of people getting conned out of thousands of dollars.

For more information on art crimes  save the date, the Museum’s new art crimes temporary exhibit is coming on February 15th, 2010!

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