A Forged Painting and A Forged Story to Go With It

Interesting bit of art forgery here, courtesy of the New York Times:













"For 32 years, a portrait of a serene Mary Todd Lincoln hung in the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Ill., signed by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, a celebrated painter who lived at the White House for six months in 1864.

"The story behind the picture was compelling: Mrs. Lincoln had Mr. Carpenter secretly paint her portrait as a surprise for the president, but he was assassinated before she had a chance to present it to him.

"Now it turns out that both the portrait and the touching tale accompanying it are false."

Here's the link.

Let's Bring History Back to the History Channel!

My friend Jade Maner has created a blog dedicated to persuading The History Channel to bring back legitimate historical programming. As anyone who has spent any time watching it lately knows, The History Channel, and its affiliate H2, History Channel 2, seem to have been taken over by programming relating to ancient aliens, pawn shop wars, Bigfoot, Yeti, and the speculation as to whether we will all be killed in December of this year by the Mayans, a giant asteroid, or by a particularly nasty solar flare.

Check out Jade's blog!