In the future: Detecting forgeries using DNA

According to The New York Times (“Eyeing DNA as a Tool to Ensure Art’s Authenticity, by Tom Mashberg, October 13, 2015), the artist Eric Fischl is one of about three dozen artists, foundations and museums who are advocating an art authentication system that uses specks of synthetic DNA to tag and identify works of art. While this system could be quite useful for works created from here on in, the authentication of older works will still have to rely upon provenance research, subjective expertise, and knowledge about and analysis of materials.