If seemed too good to be true, if may have been for a good reason. Claims regarding the supposed yard sale find of a $200 million trove of Ansel Adams’s negatives grew murkier, as it emerged that the Beverly Hills “expert” authenticating their provenance, estimating their value, and selling the prints is a convicted felon.
Art dealer David W. Streets has a record for petty theft and fraud in Louisiana, where former employers describe him as having embellished his credentials. Although his website calls him “Los Angeles’s leading appraiser of all genres of fine art and celebrity memorabilia,” former employer Doris Allen, of New Orleans’s Bryant Gallery, says he has no appraisal experience. She terms his $200 million evaluation of the negatives “absurd.”
Read more at The New York Times
