The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland by Michelle Young
The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
On August 25, 1944, Rose Valland, a woman of quiet daring, found herself in a desperate position. From the windows of her beloved Jeu de Paume museum, where she had worked and ultimately spied, she could see the battle to liberate Paris thundering around her. The Jeu de Paume, co-opted by Nazi leadership, was now the Germans’ final line of defense. Would the museum curator be killed before she could tell the truth—a story that would mean nothing less than saving humanity’s cultural inheritance? Based on troves of previously undiscovered documents, The Art Spy chronicles the brave actions of the key Resistance spy in the heart of the Nazi’s art looting headquarters in the French capital. Valland has, until now, been written out of the annals, despite bearing witness to history’s largest art theft. While Hitler was amassing stolen art for his future Führermuseum, Valland, his undercover adversary, secretly worked to stop him. Valland came face to face with Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, passed crucial information to the Resistance network, put herself deliberately in harm’s way to protect the museum and her staff, and faced death during the last hours of Liberation Day. She also single handedly provided information to stop the last train of looted artworks—bearing paintings by Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Gauguin, Braque, Degas, Modigliani, and Toulouse-Lautrec—from leaving France. Vivid and atmospheric, The Art Spy moves from the glittering days of pre-War Paris, through the tension-riddled cities of Europe on the eve of war, to the harrowing years of the Nazi occupation of France when brave people such as Valland risked everything to fight monstrous evil.
About the Speakers
Michelle Young is the author of The Art Spy. She is the founder of Untapped New York, an online magazine about New York City’s secrets and hidden places. She is also the author of Secret Brooklyn, Secret New York: An Unusual Guide, Secret New York: Hidden Bars and Restaurants, and Broadway. She is an Adjunct Professor of Architecture at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation and an instructor at CUNY’s Newmark School of Journalism. She has bylines in The Guardian, Narratively, The Forward, Business Insider, Hyperallergic, Wilson Quarterly, Food & Wine Magazine, Metropolis Magazine, Curbed, and The Huffington Post. She is also a Lowell Thomas Journalist Award winner. Michelle’s photography has been published by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, the Venice Architecture Biennale, and The Museum of Modern Art, exhibited at The Museum of the City of New York, and included in numerous books. Michelle was featured on the History Channel production The Engineering That Built the World, Netflix’s Stay Here, Smithsonian Channel’s Searching for Secrets, PBS’ 10 That Changed America, and National Geographic’s Strange Truths.
Natalie Dykstra is the author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, which won a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowship and was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award. Her recent book, Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, has received the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing and was supported by a Public Scholars grant from the NEH and an inaugural Robert and Ina Caro Research Fellowship from the Biographers International Organization. She has been an honorary fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 2011 and is an emerita professor of English at Hope College. She lives near Boston.