Laney Salisbury

Events: Hoaxes, Frauds, & Forgeries

Book: Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art

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Aly Sujo, who passed away late in 2008 after the Provenance manuscript was completed, and Laney Salisbury were a husband-and-wife writing team. The son of a New York art gallery owner, Sujo was a journalist for twenty years, covering the arts, entertainment, and foreign news for Reuters, the Associated Press, and the New York Daily News. A graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Salisbury worked for Reuters and the Associated Press, reporting from Africa, the Middle East, and New York. With her cousin Gay Salisbury, she co-authored The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic.

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art is the true story of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. Stretching from London to Paris to New York, it recounts the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist and vulnerable single dad John Myatt. Together they exploited the archives of the upper echelons of the British art world to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today.