Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [84]
She decided to ask for the original documentation. In her request for the material, however, she added a key sentence. If he was honest, there would be no harm done. If he was not, she understood she was taking a calculated risk.
“I cannot yet confirm the actual state of my research. I can only advise you to use extreme prudence with this painting,” she wrote.
Then, she got in touch with Jennifer Booth at the Tate: “I am again confronted with a certain number of documents which perplex me . . . and need your assistance.”
25
WE’RE NOT ALONE
Jennifer Booth still had her qualms about Drewe. Though he had stopped coming into the archive himself, he was sending in his researchers. Danny Berger seemed particularly suspicious. His application to access the Hanover albums was barely literate. He wrote that he was interested in the work of “Jacamety.” His visit and appearance unnerved Booth. He stayed only a few minutes, and as he flipped through the album, she realized how easy it would be for him to swap pages in the ring binder.
Meanwhile, dealers in Monaco and New York were sending Booth photocopies of receipts, correspondence, and catalogs bearing the Tate’s trademark rectangular research stamp. The documents all related to Giacomettis, and the dealers wanted Booth to confirm that the originals were in the archives. Booth combed through the Hanover and O’Hana files but could find none of the original documents. She also checked the Hanover index for the names listed on the provenances. They were nowhere to be found. She checked the application forms from researchers who had visited the Tate over the past few years, looking for those who had requested records from the Hanover and O’Hana galleries. There were several requests for the Hanover records, Drewe’s among them, but he was the sole researcher given access to the O’Hana files.
Her first thought was that he had been stealing the originals, and she reported this to her supervisors. They brushed her off, suggesting that documents were occasionally lost, stolen, or destroyed in an archive the size of the Tate’s. There was no need to hurl accusations.
Booth felt increasingly anxious about the integrity of the records in her charge. The sudden stream of requests for authentication could hardly be random. Again she inspected the photocopies she’d received, focusing on the Tate stamp: It looked too pristine. The archive’s stamp had faint hairline cracks from constant use. Someone had forged it.
And now there was a new request from Palmer, who had sent a number of documents for Booth’s review. When Booth looked at them, one letter stood out. It was from Erica Brausen to the O’Hana Gallery. The date on the letter was five months before the file on the O’Hana Gallery at the Tate started. Booth was now convinced that all the documents she’d been receiving lately were phony. “Despite the stamp,” she wrote to Palmer, “I do not think [the documents] were ever here.”
Booth again reported her findings to her supervisors, only to be told that she was being paranoid. She was insulted. She saw herself as part of an extended line of archival guardians charged with protecting the credibility of the venerated institution for which she toiled so diligently. By now she had some solid experience as head of the archives under her belt, and she knew enough not to ignore the inner voice telling her that whatever was going on in the Tate’s stacks was momentous and unacceptable. The value of an archive was measured by its totality: Each document confirmed the veracity of an earlier one and supported the next. If a single item had been doctored, the integrity of the entire collection was in jeopardy.
The word “archive” is derived from the Greek arkhe, meaning “government” or “order.” Its opposite is “anarchy,” a state without rule or order. Booth was certain