In the Arts: Museum Marks April Fool’s Day With Phony Art

The University of Cincinnati’s Dorothy W. and C. Lawson Reed Jr. Gallery celebrated April Fool’s Day by opening an exhibit called “Faux Real,” which collects the works of noted art forger Mark A. Landis, according to the Associated Press. Mr. Landis donated copies of fake Picassos and other works to museums in 20 states over the course of three decades.

The exhibit, which runs through May 20, includes about 100 works—60 of which Mr. Landis donated specifically for the show, along with a priest’s outfit he once wore when giving art to a museum.

Mr. Landis, who lives in Laurel, Miss., never took money for his forged paintings and apparently was never arrested over the fraudulent donations. He told Associated Press that he made his first fake donation to a California museum in 1985.

“They were so nice. I just got used to that, and one thing led to another,” he said. “It never occurred to me that anyone would think it was wrong.”

In other arts news:

• The Poetry Foundation and a freelance radio producer have teamed up to produce “Passing Stranger,” an audio production intended to accompany walking tours of landmarks in New York’s East Village that were important to the history of American poetry, according to The New York Times.

Sites on the tour, curated by Pejk Malinovski, include an apartment building where the poet Allen Ginsberg lived in the 1970s—in a fourth-floor walkup with a broken buzzer.

The project is part of the Poetry Foundation’s efforts to promote the art form to a wider audience, said Catherine Halley, director of digital programs. During the East Village project’s gestation, the Poetry Foundation also created similar projects in Chicago and Washington. The East Village audio tour is available as an MP3 online.

• The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, co-founded by Sir Paul McCartney, has announced plans to buy a neighboring building that once housed Liverpool College of Art, an institution whose students included a young John Lennon, says the BBC. The building, which will be purchased for $5.9-million, is currently owned by Liverpool John Moores University; it will be used by the performing-arts school for dance classes and a studio theater.

The performing-arts school was once Liverpool Institute for Boys, where the future Beatles Mr. McCartney and George Harrison were enrolled while Mr. Lennon studied next door at the art college.”There’s no denying the romance of bringing together two buildings where three Beatles once did their learning,” said Mark Featherstone-Witty, the performing-arts school’s chief executive. “I’m glad that this historic building will not become yet another boutique hotel or, yet again, be turned into flats.”