Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [85]
She understood why her superiors didn’t take her seriously. Her allegations must seem preposterous. After all, the higher-ups had dined repeatedly with Drewe, at the finest restaurants in the city, and they had been impressed by his poise, intelligence, and sophistication. His largesse was another significant factor. He was known to have contributed to several art-related charity events, and he had donated £20,000 to the archives, with an informal promise of an additional half million. That had been some time ago, but patience was a necessary virtue where museum fund-raising was concerned. Tate officials had every reason to believe that Drewe was a serious researcher. He had tipped them off to hidden archives they might be interested in, including a cache of ICA records that were said to be in New York. To the senior staff, Drewe was beyond reproach.
Shortly after Booth wrote back to Palmer, a man named Raymond Dunne applied for admission to the archives. His accompanying letter resembled others Booth had received from Drewe and his colleagues. Each paragraph was indented seven spaces, and the name of the applicant was typed beneath the signature and underlined.
Booth took matters into her own hands. She asked the department secretary, who shared her suspicions, to do a little detective work. The secretary dialed the phone number Dunne had listed on his application and found that it was out of order. When she drove to the address on the application, she found a boarded-up house.
When Dunne called a few days later to make an appointment, the secretary passed the phone to Booth. “It’s Drewe,” she whispered. “I’m absolutely sure of it.”
Booth told the caller she needed more information if his application was to go through. The man explained that he was working on his thesis, which focused on London’s postwar art exhibitions. Booth was also sure it was Drewe: The same upper-class accent, the same cascade of accumulated detail and cultural references. She asked him to send a second reference letter, and he agreed to do so.
She never heard from Dunne again.
A few days later a colleague at the British Council called to warn her about a well-known researcher, Anne Massey, who had been caught photocopying material without authorization and was subsequently banned from the council archives. She told Booth to be on the lookout in case Massey tried to gain access to the Tate. Booth was surprised, because she knew Massey and respected her work.
Then Booth’s council colleague mentioned that Massey had been focusing on Ben Nicholson’s paintings and was working for a wealthy collector named John Drewe.
We’re not alone, Booth thought.
26
A SLOW BURN . . .
Her worst suspicions confirmed, Mary Lisa Palmer began poring over old London telephone directories and newspaper archives. In decades of back issues of an art journal listing the exhibitions held at London’s major galleries in the 1950s, she found nothing that matched the awkward title of the O’Hana catalog Bartos had sent her, “Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Stage Designs with Contributions from Members of the Entertainment World.” However, the defunct gallery had once held a show with a similar title, “Paintings by Stars of the Entertainment World.”
Palmer speculated that this show might have provided the inspiration for the bogus catalog, which had a photographer’s stamp and the name of a printer on the back. She called the printer. They had no record of any such catalog. The photographer’s stamp was from Leslie & Collier Partners, the agency that had supposedly shot the pictures and had an address that put it next door to the ICA. That was an odd coincidence, Palmer thought. She checked the records for registered British companies but could find no trace of Leslie & Collier.
Palmer held one of the catalog pages up to the light and copied down the watermark, which consisted of the word “Conqueror” over the image of a