In The Collector’s Apprentice, the author B. A. Shapiro disguises the life of Dr. Albert Coombs Barnes, the chemist and physician, as Edwin Bradley, a man with a similar history, and turns it into a thriller. Both men develop a medication, Argyrol, to prevent ophthalmic gonorrhoeae in newborns, With the wealth they garner from this medication, they begin an extensive art collection which they plan to house in a large museum on Latch’s Lane in Merion Station, Pennsylvania.
The book is filled with lovely art details and an imaginary affair between Paulien Mertens, a young woman whom the fictional Bradley, hires as a translator in Paris. Later, she becomes his apprentice and helps him develop his collection and the building to house it.
I lived in Merion Station for fifteen years, only a few doors from the Barnes Foundation, and know its environs and the art collection quite well. Indeed, the controversy over whether the collection should continue to be housed in the Foundation’s old building or in a new museum in downtown Philadelphia continued until 2004 when a judge ordered that the museum’s artworks could be moved out of lower Merion. Shapiro does a great job in presenting the political conniving that goes on between the myriad characters in this book. I enjoyed reading it and revising the Barnes Foundation.
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The Collector’s Apprentice [Algonquin Books (October 16, 2018)] is available through:
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