Author Visit with Michelle Young

The Art Spy Book Release with Gramercy Books

Join author Michelle Young for the launch of The Art Spy, a riveting saga set in Paris during WWII. Michelle will be in conversation with Nannette Maciejunes, ED Emerita of the Columbus Museum of Art.

Join award-winning journalist, author, and professor Michelle Young for the launch of The Art Spy, a riveting and stylish saga set in Paris during World War II featuring the brave actions of Jeu de Paume curator Rose Valland and chronicling how she infiltrated the Nazi leadership to save the cultural legacy of the West. Michelle will be in conversation with Nannette Maciejunes, Executive Director Emerita of the Columbus Museum of Art.

Registration for this free event is on Eventbrite. You can pre-purchase The Art Spy during registration. Young’s book will also be available at the event.

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. A veritable female Monuments Man, 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.

At every stage of World War II, Valland was front and center. She 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 singlehandedly 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, home to geniuses of modern culture, including Picasso, Josephine Baker, Coco Chanel, Le Corbusier, and Frida Kahlo, through the tension-riddled cities and resorts 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.

In the spirit of Hidden Figures, with the sweeping narrative of The Rape of Europa and the depth of The Resistance Quartet, The Art Spy is an extraordinary tale of a female hero whose courage and tenacity in a time of violence and terror is an inspiration for us all.

Michelle Young is an award-winning journalist, author, and professor whose writing on looted and lost art has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Forward, and The Wilson Quarterly. She is a graduate of Harvard College in the History of Art and Architecture and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is a Professor of Architecture. She is the founder of the publication Untapped New York. She divides her time between New York City and Paris. 

Nannette Maciejunes is Executive Director Emerita of the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) after serving as Executive Director and CEO for 20 years. Prior to that, she worked as a curator for two decades, culminating in her tenure as CMA’s Chief Curator. Her arts scholarship and passion for making the museum accessible and welcoming to all stood at the forefront of her tenure as director, along with organizing major exhibitions, advocating for public art funding, and innovating educational programming. Nannette also spearheaded Art Matters, the largest and most successful endowment and capital campaign in CMA’s history, supporting the Museum’s transformative renovation, expansion, and commitment to courageous imagination. An Ohio native, Nannette received her B.A. from Denison University and did her graduate work in the History of Art at Ohio State University. She’s also a graduate of both Stanford’s Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders and the Getty’s Leadership Institute for Museum Management. In 2018, Nannette was appointed Adjunct Assistant Professor in Ohio State’s Arts Administration, Education and Policy Program.

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