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Gardner argues that it is the job of a historian to close the gap between their knowledge of history and the public's and questions the role of historians in formulating the public's understanding of history. He posits that "the selection of artifacts for exhibition is itself a subjective act, a way of shaping perspective, establishing point of view, and that artifacts never simply stand as objective evidence," and this is something the public must know. This is very relevant to the van Meegeren case because it is helpful in understanding the opinions that went into Dutch museums' pursuit of the "Vermeers," specifically that they wanted to keep Dutch work in the Netherlands and out of the hands of the Nazis, rather than understanding them as neutral institutions who present artifacts and paintings objectively.

Scott demonstrates how history can be used to promote political narratives. She defines history as "the study of contested relations of power," meaning that the past is written based on power dynamics. The implications of this for the van Meegeren case are twofold; firstly, 80 years after World War II, we can look at Nazi Hermann Göring's purchase of a van Meegeren forgery safe in the knowledge that the Allied powers won the war and that Göring had been tricked into buying a fake — yet it was the very circumstance of the war that allowed van Meegeren's forgeries to be successful. Thus, people's perception of van Meegeren as a hero can be complicated, given that he profited off of wartime chaos and Nazi greed. Secondly, in sources written about the van Meegeren case and how he fooled scholars into thinking his paintings were real Vermeers, the modern-day scholars suggest that the forgeries were not all that good, and that if the art historians and critics of the time were not distracted by their reputations and other political factors, the forgeries wouldn't have been discovered. However, Scott reminds us that history is usually written by the winners, or the people in a position of power, and it is easier to make such claims once van Meegeren was discovered and his trial was concluded. Therefore, his case can be used to demonstrate the triumph of the Allied powers and a return to order in the art world that supposedly could have come sooner, had the scholars been "paying attention."

Lubar explains that in order to put together a museum's collection, "one fits together the pieces of a complicated, multidimensional jigsaw puzzle." There must be a purpose in the collection of the works — what is the museum trying to say, what are the curators trying to prove? Further, Lubar describes some artifacts as "museum-worthy," and others as not. In the case of the Vermeer forgeries, the paintings were largely only viewed as "museum-worthy" when they were thought to be Vermeers as opposed to van Meegerens, speaking to the value of a name. Since he was a premier Dutch Golden Age painter, a Vermeer was a prized possession, especially for a Dutch museum, and was something the whole country could be proud of. Not only were the Dutch museums trying to keep Vermeers away from the Nazis, but they were trying to instill a sense of national pride.

Rodriguez asserts that museums are subjective institutions. She acknowledges that they still need to present the facts, but proposes that their opinion is crucial and that when they "choose neutrality they choose silence...[which] means complicity with the demons of their times." This subjectivity was crucial when it came to preventing artwork from reaching the Nazis; the Dutch museums' desire to keep Dutch paintings in the Netherlands and away from the Germans led to immense amounts of money being raised so they could afford to buy the "Vermeers."