The Faun is a sculpture by British forger Shaun Greenhalgh. He successfully passed it off as a work by Paul Gauguin, selling it at Sotheby's for £20,700 in 1994. Three years later, in 1997, it was bought by the Art Institute of Chicago for an undisclosed sum, thought to be about $125,000. It was hailed by them as "one of its most important acquisitions in the last twenty years."
For a decade the sculpture remained on display, and was part of a major joint exhibition on Gauguin with the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. However, following revelations about its existence at Greenhalgh's trial in 2007, The Faun was tracked down by The Art Newspaper to Chicago and exposed as a fake.
In October, the Art Institute removed the statue from display, and announced that it was seeking compensation from Sotheby's. What the ultimate fate of The Faun is to be has not yet been revealed.
Read more about The Faun: Background To The Forgery, Sold Twice Over, The "good Sculpture", The "Van Gogh and Gauguin" Exhibition, Exposure and Reaction