As $1.6 Million in Rare Photos Vanished, the Excuses Piled Up

Knaak said his client was a serious collector who knew Beard personally and consigned the two photos, valued at $30,000, with her in late 2019.

“It’s very embarrassing to have to admit to your peers that maybe you’ve been taken advantage of,” Knaak said. “What made it most painful was a violation of trust in a fairly small circle of collectors.”

The most valuable photograph that the F.B.I. said was stolen was a mural-size print by Adams titled “The Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park.” Beard sold it for $440,000 to a gallery in Jackson Hole, Wyo., near where Adams took the black-and-white landscape of a river winding toward snow-capped mountains.

But the agency alleges Beard never bothered to tell the print’s original owner, an 82-year-old who had consigned $900,000 worth of fine art photography with her. Beard was due a 5 percent commission for her efforts, but the F.B.I. said she took the full amount of the Adams sale instead.

The print was sold several times after that, eventually landing in a private home in Idaho for a price of $685,000. It is unclear if that work or any of the other photos, many stowed away as F.B.I. evidence, will be returned to their original owners.

Baughman met Halsted, Beard’s father, in 1972 at his gallery in the ritzy Detroit suburb of Birmingham. Baughman was a budding photographer, while Halsted was an entrepreneur and early believer in the field of photography as fine art.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/arts/design/photo-fraud-wendy-halsted-beard-fbi.html