Image: Leonhard Wacker, Zeegezicht te Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, c. 1927–1928
The Kröller-Müller Museum’s podcast ‘De ontmaskerde vervalsing’ (The Unmasked Forgery) has been nominated at the Podcast Awards, the museum announced in its October newsletter. The series is in the running for the jury prize, and listeners can also vote for it in the audience prize.
Across six episodes, the podcast follows the life of Helene Kröller-Müller, the museum’s founder: her early collecting, her lifelong attachment to Vincent van Gogh and her ambition to create a museum of her own. Running through the story is the Wacker affair, one of the largest art forgery scandals.
In the 1920s, the art dealer Otto Wacker brought 33 previously unknown ‘Van Goghs’ onto the market. Helene Kröller-Müller bought one of them, a seascape with boats on the waves titled ‘Zeegezicht te Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer’. It was later established that the paintings were not by Van Gogh, and the museum now attributes its canvas to Leonhard Wacker, dating it to around 1927–1928.
The series was produced by Palentino for the museum. Anna Drijver narrates, with Tanja Jess voicing Helene Kröller-Müller, Sijtze van der Meer as Anton Kröller and Mark Rietman as her adviser H.P. Bremmer. Each episode closes with a discussion between Eva Rovers and Ariëtte Dekker, the biographers of Helene and Anton Kröller-Müller, while the journalist Pieter van Os conducts the interviews in the final episode.
The podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Podimo.
