Fake It ’til You Make It
Posted by Polly Carl on 10/09/2009
Meatloaf cupcakes? England, the father of us all? Shop The Onion this holiday season?
On Friday, October 2, Steppenwolf hosted an EXPLORE event for Fake, featuring entertaining and informative discussions of fakes with Professor Robert Martin, curator at the The Field Museum, and Peter Alter, curator at the Chicago History Museum. Professor Martin has spent a significant part of his career studying brain size and brought slides of the Piltdown skull. In spite of scrutiny and skepticism at the time of its discovery, popular opinion as to its authenticity prevailed over science.
The Piltdown skull passed muster because:
1. The skull played to what proved to be false expectations that brain size surpassed jaw size in evolution and
2. The notion that modern man began in England was too tempting to let go.
Peter Alter entertained us with slides of objects from a show he curated at the Chicago History Museum called Is It Real? They included the “skin of the snake” from the Garden of Eden, and a fake of a fake gun John Dillinger used to escape an Indiana prison. As he suggested, fakes have their own history and value based on their ability to make people believe long enough to make them real - at least for a moment in history.
Surrounding the conversation of museum fakes were all kinds of other shams, forgeries, and imposters. The Handsome Devilz performed convincingly as The Smiths throughout the evening. When I got hungry and went to grab what I thought was a sugary cupcake, I found three kinds of meatloaf instead. And the Onion was in attendance - displaying nifty gifties, like the Visorganizor - a visor accessory that “turns your hat into another pocket,” or the USB Powered Toaster - gifts sure to inspire feigned appreciation from any recipient.
Be sure to check out our photo gallery from the event and be on the look out for future EXPLORE events!