A short series of talks on cheating, fakes and frauds to accompany the exhibition by Lynn Hershman Leeson.
Speakers include:
Nigel Warburton: The Ethics of Cheating
Warburton discusses how and why we decide to cheat and if it’s ever ok to cheat.
Nigel Warburton is a freelance philosopher, podcaster and writer, described by Julian Baggini as ‘one of the most-read popular philosophers of our time’. His books include A Little History of Philosophy, Philosophy: The Basics, Philosophy: The Classics, Thinking from A to Z, The Art Question, and Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction. He is the interviewer for the popular Philosophy Bites podcast which he makes with David Edmonds and which has been downloaded nearly 19 million times, and has formed the basis of two books, Philosophy Bites and Philosophy Bites Back.
Robert Hutton: Lying
Hutton will talk about how we lie to ourselves and to each other, the sorts of lies we tell and how you can spot a lie.
Robert Hutton is a British political reporter for Bloomberg News and author of the Journalese collection Romps, Tots and Boffins and the Uncommunication guide Would They Lie To You?
Megan Aldrich: Authenticity and the Gothic Revival
Aldrich will discuss William Beckford at Fonthill Abbey, who on occasion lied about the provenance of his decorative and antiquarian objects because he was so caught up in the ‘narrative’ of what he wanted them to be. Aldrich will talk about the fashion for creating false and imagined architectural histories in England in the 19th Century.
Megan Aldrich began her career in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She curated the exhibition on the Crace firm of decorators at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery in Sussex in 1990 and edited the accompanying publication. She is currently Senior Fellow in Object Based Studies at Sotheby’s Institute of Art.