Michelle Young is the author of the new book The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland. Her other books include Secret Brooklyn. She is also a professor of architecture at Columbia University, and is the founder of the media company Untapped New York.
Q: In The Art Spy’s Author’s Note, you write that you first learned about Rose Valland while reading a different book. Can you say more about that, and about what inspired you to write The Art Spy?
A: I’ve always been fascinated with WWII, partially due to my family’s own history—my grandfather survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.
When I married someone French, I began devouring WWII books about the European war and ending up in the surprisingly robust niche of true story female spy books. And so, I was very familiar with the names of a lot of women spies from WWII.
But when I read the book Göring’s Man in Paris by Jonathan Petropoulos, about Hermann Göring’s art dealer in Paris, Rose Valland appeared every few chapters, and I couldn’t believe I had not heard of her.
Her story, spying under the noses of some of the most powerful Nazis during all of WWII, seemed so compelling and I wanted to know more about her. I remember sitting with a friend one weekend and saying, “One day, I’d like to write a book about Rose Valland.”
I started by getting my hands on some existing literature in French about her and by showing up in her hometown, Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, to poke around.
Q: The writer Lynne Olson said of the book, “In her masterful biography of one of the greatest unknown heroines of World War II, Michelle Young brings the French art historian Rose Valland to brilliant life and finally gives her the credit she is due.” What do you think of that description, and why do you think Valland's story wasn't better known?
A: Lynne Olson is a hero of mine. Her books are incredibly vivid, and she really brings her characters to life. I would not have even thought of writing this book had I not read her wonderful books, like Madame Fourcade’s Secret War. It’s such an honor to have her say that about The Art Spy.
There are a lot of reasons why Valland’s story isn’t well known today. She had a brush with fame after the war, particularly after the movie The Train came out. It was a film optioned off her memoir, Le Front de l’Art, and starred Burt Lancaster.
But with fame came attacks. You have to remember that Valland was operating in a very traditional milieu of government officials and art administrators, not all who were happy with her fame and her insistence on continuing to investigate looted art so many years after the war.
The very Nazis who she reported against attacked her after the war, as well. Europe wanted to move forward and forget, it was the Cold War, but for decades after, she continued to hold people to account, people who remained in the art business and people who remained in positions of power. She was deliberately silenced by the powers that be in France.
Valland also never fit into the world she operated in. She came from a working-class family in a small town far from Paris. Valland was also at heart an academic and not a self-promoter. Although she made her way up to the very pinnacle of the arts education available in France, she would always be an outsider.
France remains quite similar to this day. There’s a phrase, “There’s Paris, and there’s everything else.” Society remains quite striated there.
Her sexual orientation would be another factor. She was not out as a lesbian, but she was in a long-term relationship with a woman named Joyce Heer since at least the early 1930s.
There were very few women curators in France before and after World War II, let alone gay women in the field, so you can imagine what it must have been like for someone like Rose to become famous and to still holding people to account for their wartime deeds. It didn’t win her many fans.
When she died, only a handful of people came to her funeral at Les Invalides. I personally think she would have thrived in America where we are more apt to celebrate women with pluck, assertiveness, and steadfast determination.
Q: How would you describe the dynamic between Valland and her partner, Joyce Heer?
A: Rose Valland and Joyce Heer were together for 50 years. They were very much intellectual equals. My research has lifted the veil on who Joyce was and for the first time, I got a hold of her educational history, employment history, and even how they met. I also spoke with her nephew and niece, who was also her goddaughter.
The two women were bound by a love of culture and a love for France. They helped each other, especially with languages. Joyce was half German so would have helped Rose learn the language and likely help decipher documents.
As a British citizen, Joyce had the opportunity to leave France after the outbreak of WWII and when the Germans invaded France. She worked with the US Embassy, who offered to evacuate her. But she deliberately chose to stay, undoubtedly to be with Rose.
When Joyce died, Rose had her buried in her family vault, and told her cousin that she did not know how to live anymore. Rose died three years later. I think that really says it all.
Q: What do you see as Rose Valland’s legacy today?
A: Once again, we’ve entered a world where many people seem to be drawn to strong men and totalitarianism. Valland was extremely clear-eyed in what she saw was right morally and she was willing to risk her life for it.
She continued to fight for justice—restituting art to those who had their possessions and sometimes their lives stolen from them—and she never gave up, even after everyone wanted to move on. And she was proven right.
Now, when artwork goes on auction, auction houses must find a solution when the art has been looted. She predicted that looted artwork would surface long after her the war and long after her death, and that the art world would need to find ways to reckon what that history.
I found it inspiring and heartening to know that that there are people who will always fight for what’s right, no matter the cost.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: When I’m not working on things related to The Art Spy, I write about lost and looted art for Hyperallergic, continue to consult on the media company I founded, Untapped New York, and run its podcast, and I’m working on a new book proposal, still under wraps! It’s not related to World War II. I would like to come back to WWII after my next book, however!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: The Art Spy is a deep dive into Rose Valland’s wartime life but also, a second and no less important storyline in the book is about the Jewish gallery owner Paul Rosenberg and his son, Alexandre Rosenberg, who was a Free French soldier fighting to Liberate France.
I am trained in art history and architecture, but I have always loved the military history of WWII and I was excited and honored to be able to tell the story of the war itself through the eyes of Alexandre, as well as the plight of Jewish refugees, through the story of Paul Rosenberg. Every time I read the last section of the book, I tear up.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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