Why Is This Man Smiling?

Courtesy Redux

David Lester

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On a chilly evening in early February, as smoky-voiced jazz singer Hilary Kole crooned "They Can’t Take That Away from Me," art fair organizers David and Lee Ann Lester climbed to the stage in the ballroom of Donald Trump’s over-the-top Palm Beach confection, the Mar-a-Lago Club. Gracious, poised and seemingly thrilled by the spotlight, the Lesters thanked the assembled dealers and their vip clients for their support, then descended to their own table accompanied by a rousing round of applause.

Paint several thick layers of Trumpian gilt onto Ulysses’s return to Ithaca, and you would approximate the homecoming of the indefatigable Lesters, who were basking that night in the glow of the opening gala of their American International Fine Art Fair. Last summer, the couple bought back the fair, which they founded eight years ago, from dmg World Media for a rumored $1 million to $3 million (David won’t confirm those figures).

The Lesters — notorious in some circles for their delay-plagued art-expo on a megayacht, Seafair, which had last been seen 70 miles down the coast, bobbing in front of Miami’s Fountainbleau during Art Basel Miami Beach — returned to Palm Beach at the behest of a group of disgruntled dealers who were prepared to take over the fair themselves and were looking for leadership. Some of these dealers were among the guests at the gala, who chatted, clinked glasses and eventually gravitated to the dance floor.

Despite a brutal recession, the Lesters turned the ailing fair around. They added events like the one at Mar-a-Lago, where the diamond purveyor François Graff and the Tiffany expert Lloyd Macklowe each paid hundreds of dollars a seat to host collector clients; brought back the Norton Museum of Art as honoree for opening night; and bused in dozens of well-heeled collectors from Naples, on Florida’s West Coast, to supplement the local art-loving gentry. Opening-night attendance soared to 3,400 from the previous year’s 600, and 24,000 guests visited the fair over its six days.

David Lester, who has said that the rich love nothing better than freebies, made sure that any muckety-muck within spitting distance of Lake Worth was presented with gratis tickets, creating the critical mass that gives a fair buzz. It wasn’t difficult to identify him as the target of a comment that the New York fair organizer Sanford Smith posted on his Web site recently: "For years, one Palm Beach show has been notorious for ‘papering’ every retirement community in South Florida." Indeed, Lester employs a combination of chutzpah, elbow grease and salesman’s tactics that is as often controversial as it is effective.

Even if the vast majority of the souls Lester drew to the fair with his complimentary admissions weren’t buying, they kept the aisles active. As reports of sales began to trickle in — a $300,000 Tiffany lamp at Macklowe, a $40,000 Max Ernst sculpture at Galerie Thomas, a $5 million-plus Andrew Wyeth painting at Adelson — there was a palpable sense of relief, even levity, among dealers. Business wasn’t gangbusters, but who expected that? The fair hadn’t wilted in the long shadow of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scandal, and in Palm Beach, where the financier was a fixture, that meant a lot.

With his slightly awkward gait, crooked grin and eyes perpetually squinting behind thick glasses, the 65-year-old Lester doesn’t fit the image of a suave art fair honcho. "When Seafair was perceived by the trade as not being that successful and it was David’s only vehicle, he would walk around fairs and I could see people rolling their eyes," says Michael James, co-managing director of the Silver Fund, a specialist in vintage Georg Jensen silver and one of the exhibitors at Lester’s event. "Now that he’s taken back Palm Beach and had a success with it, his whole persona has changed in terms of how people view him. I was touched to see him on that stage. It was like Elvis returning to Vegas."