Rose Valland: A spy in the museum
55 Cable St, Wellington
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Join us for our final lecture of 2021 when Judge Arthur Tompkins returns with another Art Crime tale.
Rose Valland is one of the great unsung heroes of the fight against art crime during war. At the outbreak of World War II she was a volunteer curator at the Louvre. Throughout the Nazi occupation of France, and at enormous personal risk, she worked undercover alongside the Nazis as they plundered French and European art, cataloguing and tracing and protecting the stolen art, and passing this invaluable information to the French Resistance. Her information as to the stolen art’s whereabouts subsequently provided to the Allies, and her work after the war, was instrumental in the recovery and return of much-plundered art. At her death, she was the most decorated woman in French military history. This is her story.
Arthur Tompkins is a District Court Judge based in Wellington. When he is not doing his day job, and when Covid-19 allows, he teaches Art Crime in War at a Graduate Certificate Programme in Art Crimes Studies based in Amelia, Umbria, Italy. He is the author of Plundering Beauty: A History of Art Crime during War (Lund Humphries, London, 2018).
Image Credit: Landscape at Vétheuil, c. 1890. Auguste Renoir (artist) French, 1841 – 1919. Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
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