10. Jasper Johns And The Bronze Flag Forgery
In 2010, owner of the Empire Bronze Art Foundry in Long Island City, Brian Ramnarine tried to sell a forgery of one of Johns’s bronze flag sculptures for a reported £6 million. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to bring shame to my family,” stated Ramnarine, 60, as he told Manhattan federal Judge John Koetl before being sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for attempting to sell fake bronze sculptures purported to be by Jasper Johns and other artists. In 1990, Johns had given Ramnarine a mold of his metallic sculpture Flag (1960) so that the foundry owner could make a wax cast. But instead of destroying the mold, Ramnarine used it to make a new bronze flag, then forged Johns’s signature. Read our article here