Fake for Real touring exhibition - the first stop on the journey

By Raluca Neamu, project manager

Imagine a place with numerous fake objects from different European countries, from various historic ages in the most accurate space from the certainty point of view: a museum. 

Imagine a whole series of case-studies about fakes and forgeries in history that are traveling in Europe, from city to city, to spread the narrative about the intentional lies in science, religion, history, commercial life, prints and geography. How can a fake be debunked? What are the stages a fake evolves through, before being discredited? How effective is it to expose a forgery — and is the new truth accepted by the audience?

The first touring exhibition of the House of European History “Fake for Real” addresses these questions in a dynamic narrative approach. It’s first venue is the Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation in Thessaloniki, where the Greek audience has eagerly visited it since its opening on 2 February 2024.

The stories are unravelled with the help of historical objects attractively displayed to tell about the sequence of episodes in which they played the most important role. Interactive games and animations complete the story of numerous fakes that happened in history, from Constantine, the Byzantine emperor, until the current war in Ukraine. 

The exhibition is open in Greece is open until 16 June 2024, followed by its next stop this year in Bulgaria, in the National Ethnographic Museum, then Hungary, in the Open Society Archive. Two other museums in Romania and Sweden are negotiating the possibility to host it and only one free time-slot is available for the last host museum, between 28 July to 16 November 2025. If your museum or organisation is interested in completing the journey of Fake for Real, feel free to contact us.