Last week, Dr. Flam–the Graduate Center’s Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Art History, appeared on 60 Minutes with Anderson Cooper discussing his role as whistleblower in the Knoedler sandal.
Over the course of 15 years, the Knoedler Gallery–which shuttered in 2011– had sold millions of dollars in forged artworks to wealthy collectors.
Dr. Flam, president of the Robert Motherwell Foundation and one of the world’s top experts on his work, was assembling a catalogue of all of Motherwell’s paintings when he discovered the fraud.
According to the 60 Minutes report, “the fraud might still be going on if it weren’t for [Flam]–who was the first person to uncover the scheme and blow the whistle to the government, putting the brakes on an $80 million con — the most audacious and lucrative art fraud in U.S. history.”
