The Deception Expert: Maximilian Toch’s Science of Authentication

Time: 12:00 - 1:00 p.m.

Place: 6th Floor Conference Room, Chemical Heritage Foundation

Information: 215-873-8289 or bbl@chemheritage.org

Maximilian Toch was an omnibus chemical expert who based his claims to authority on the rejection of “expertise” in favor of “science.” Inheritor of his immigrant father’s New York–based paint and varnish firm, he pursued a quixotic course of chemical study and teaching in the city’s universities at the turn of the 20th century. Toch’s fame (and notoriety) was derived mainly from deception: as a chief consultant on camouflage to the U.S. armed forces during World War I and as a tenacious skeptic arguing for the misattribution of numerous supposed paintings of the old masters during the 1930s.

Indeed, Toch staked the authenticity of his science on his mastery of deception throughout the other chemical avocations—public health, construction safety—that dotted his career. In pursuing and recounting these endeavors Toch developed an ideal of his chemical science defined in opposition to the practices of an “expert,” who deceived because of, or was deceived by, his allegiance to traditional disciplinary methods and his own financial interests.

Evan Hepler-Smith is in his second year of doctoral study in Princeton University’s Program in the History of Science. He received an A.B. in literature from Harvard College in 2006. During his four-year furlough from academia he lived in New York and worked in sundry fields from online education and psychometrics to collectible figurine marketing.