Most of a Mexican Museum collection fails authentication

1 A tripod bowl from Costa Rica, 900 C.E.-1200 C.E., is an example of a museum quality artifact pictured at The Mexican Museum July 6, 2017 in San Francisco, Calif. 1 A tripod bowl from Costa Rica, 900 C.E.-1200 C.E., is an example of a museum quality artifact pictured at The Mexican Museum July 6, 2017 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 12 Caption Close Most of a Mexican Museum collection fails authentication 1 / 12 Back to Gallery

Almost all of the artifacts described as the oldest in the permanent collection of the Mexican Museum are either forgeries or cannot be authenticated to display in a national museum.

That’s the finding of a report commissioned by the museum board and submitted in late June by Eduardo Pérez de Heredia Puente, an associate of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

According to the report, only 83 of 2,000 artifacts from the pre-Hispanic, or pre-Columbian, era could be certified as museum-quality by an independent team of museum curators who came from Mexico City to conduct the test. The other 1,917 are considered “decorative,” and will probably be given to schools or smaller museums before the museum moves from its temporary Fort Mason site to a permanent home in a luxury condo tower being constructed near SFMOMA.

“I was surprised,” said Andrew Kluger, chair of the board of trustees, who shared the 14-page report with The Chronicle. “I thought we’d have more that are of museum quality.”

The tally of forgeries and decorative pieces will probably grow, because this is just the first of several authentication studies to be done on the museum’s collection of 16,500 items.

The results of the pre-Hispanic tests were first reported by Lydia Chávez, a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and editor of the website Mission Local.

The $80,000 report was undertaken as a requirement of the Smithsonian Institution, which accepted the Mexican Museum as an affiliate in 2012. The recognition by the Smithsonian took the Mexican out of the realm of small community museums, where it has operated since its founding in 1975.

In the early years, the museum built its collection on donations, and basically anything was accepted, without authentication. All of the items studied, both fake and real, were donated to the museums, and no tax deductions were given to donors without independent authentication, Kluger said.

“It happens all the time that museums accept things that are not real,” he said. “People donate pieces because their children don’t want them.”

But hand-me-downs cannot be part of any museum that offers parts of its collection on loan and accepts artifact loans from the Smithsonian. While the ratio of authenticated pre-Hispanic artifacts is astonishingly low, Kluger does not expect that to be the case with later periods in the collection.

“Most of it is good,” he said, “and everything in the Latino art and Chicano art collection appears to be authentic.”

According to the museum’s website, the pre-Hispanic Collection goes back 2,500 years and represents 2,000 pieces encompassing Mesoamerican, Central American and Peruvian cultures. The items include vessels, tools, ceremonial objects and body ornaments from Teotihuacan, Mayan, Zapotec, Nayarit, Colima and Peruvian Incan civilizations.

The 83 items that were authenticated include male and female figurines, jars, bowls, vases and necklace ornaments. The collection is now augmented by a recent gift of another 86 or so pre-Hispanic sculptures from a Berkeley collector that have already been authenticated.

“The good news is we have 170 museum-quality (pre-Hispanic) pieces, and in many museums that is considered a good collection,” Kluger said. “The bad news is that we need to make a decision what to do with the pieces that are not up to our standard.”

That can also be construed as good news, because the collection has been scattered around warehouses during the museum’s long temporary stay in Fort Mason. The plan is to consolidate the full collection on site at the museum’s future home on Jessie Square. Culling it now will save moving and insurance charges.

The move is planned for 2019 upon completion of the 47-story tower on Jessie Square, between the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Mexican Museum will occupy four floors for a total of 60,000 square feet. The museum will cost $86 million to build and endow, a sum that was raised during a four-year capital campaign.

According to Chávez, who has taught a course in art and culture in Latin America at the Berkeley journalism school, the report and the board’s response to it are positive signals.

“They are getting serious about being a national museum and trying to build a collection,” she said. “They are going through the collection to see what should be kept, and it is a way of sending a message to donors that they are serious.”

Kluger, a San Rafael venture capitalist, is serving in the absence of a museum director, though a search has been launched. The museum has gotten picky about accepting donated artifacts.

“Recently we have turned away pieces,” he said. “This is a process that has just begun.”

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Instagram: @sfchronicle_art

The good and the bad

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