#Rose Valland

[marzipanandminutiae]

every museum employee handbook: do NOT risk your life to save the objects! ever!

me, lighting candles at a shrine to Rose Valland: [read 11:45 AM]

[hard--headed--woman]

Rose Valland !

She was a French Resistance fighter who rescued and recovered more than 60,000 works of art and cultural property stolen by the Nazis from public institutions and Jewish families during the German occupation!!! For that, she was nicknamed "Capitaine Beaux-Arts"

Rose was born in 1898 and died in 1980. Although she never spoke publicly about her private life and sexual orientation, she never married, and the only relationship she ever had was with a woman.

She was able to study thanks to her mother, who applied for grants for her daughter. In 1914, she entered the École normale d'institutrices in Grenoble, graduating in 1918. Gifted for drawing and encouraged by her teachers, she left to study at the École nationale des beaux-arts in Lyon.

She gained a good reputation there, because she was talented and serious, and won a lot of prizes! In 1922, she entered the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. She then passed the competitive examination for teaching drawing, coming 6th out of more than 300 candidates.

During the 1920s, she studied art history at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the École du Louvre and the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie. In 1931, she obtained her diploma from the École du Louvre on the evolution of the Italian art movement up to Giotto. At the Institute of Art and Archaeology at the University of Paris, she obtained three postgraduate certificates in modern art history, medieval archaeology and Greek archaeology. She was so intelligent and cultured, with so many diplomas, it's impressive! She published some studies and articles too, and she even learned to speak some languages like German without even studying it.

From October 1940, at the request of Jacques Jaujard, Director of the Musées Nationaux, she remained at the Musée du Jeu de Paume, officially as a curatorial attaché, unofficially instructed by Jacques Jaujard to report to him on the actions of the Germans, who had just requisitioned the museum to store works of art extorted from private collectors.

During the Occupation, the Germans began systematically looting works from museums and private collections across France, mainly those belonging to Jews who had been deported or had fled. They used the Jeu de Paume museum as a central depot before sorting and directing the works to various destinations in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe. During the Nazi looting, Rose Valland discreetly recorded, as accurately as possible, the movements of the works passing through the Musée du Jeu de Paume, the names of the looted victims, the number of works, their destinations, the names of the agents in charge of the transfers, the names of the transporters, the marks and writing on the crates, the numbers and dates of the convoys, not forgetting the name of the artist, the work and its dimensions.

For over four years, she kept track of all the works' movements, origins and destinations. She scrupulously drew up dozens of index cards, deciphered German carbon paper discarded in the museum's garbage cans, and discreetly listened in on the conversations of Nazi officials. She provided the Resistance with essential, detailed information on the trains transporting the works, so that these convoys could be spared by the Resistance. In autumn 1944, she gave the Allies the names of German and Austrian depots (Altaussee, Buxheim, Neuschwanstein, Füssen, Nikolsburg, etc.) to avoid bombing, secure them and facilitate the recovery of stored works.

After the liberation of Paris by Allied troops, and until May 1, 1945, she worked with SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force), providing the Americans with vital information on storage sites for works transferred to Germany and Austria.

From May 1945, she was seconded from the Ministry of National Education to the Ministry of War, then from 1946 to 1952, seconded as a 3rd class administrator to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, occupying the Secretariat of State and then the General Commissariat for German and Austrian Affairs. Nicknamed "Captain Beaux-arts", she was appointed Captain in the 1st French Army, while also serving as Head of the Service de remise en place des œuvres d'art (SROA) within the Public Education Division of the French Group of the Board of Control.

She was sent to the various Allied occupation zones, British, American and Soviet, from where she repatriated a large number of works. She cooperated with American agents to conduct investigations and interrogate the Nazi officers and merchants responsible for the looting.

She played a decisive role in the February 1946 Nuremberg hearings on the plundering of art by Nazi leaders.

Between 1945 and 1954, she took part in the repatriation of over 60,000 items of French cultural property taken from public institutions and persecuted Jewish families.

Her courageous and heroic actions during the war and post-war years earned her numerous French and foreign decorations. In fact, Rose Valland was one of the most highly decorated women in French history.

She was :

-> made an Officer of the Legion of Honor

-> made a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters

-> awarded the French Resistance Medal

-> awarded the Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian decoration in the USA

-> made an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany

-> awarded the Latvian medal of the Order of the Three Stars in recognition of her involvement in the Latvian Art Exhibition (painting, sculpture and folk art), held at the Jeu de Paume from January 27 to February 28, 1939.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with women in history, the role she played in the Resistance, protecting French works of art and the property of deported Jewish people, was quickly forgotten, and her name is hardly ever mentioned today when this part of history is evoked. Insane, when you know everything she's done and how many decorations she got...

At an undetermined time, perhaps in the post-war years, Rose Valland met the British woman Joyce Heer, secretary-interpreter at the U.S. Embassy, who became her lover until her death. The two women shared an apartment on rue de Navarre in Paris. Rose Valland reserved a place for her beside her in the family vault.

Rose Valland died in 1980 at the age of 81 in a nursing home in Ris-Orangis, outside Paris. She is buried with her lover in the family vault in her native village of Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs, where the secondary school and a square bear her name.

She truly was a hero, and I wish we talked about her more !

[yourdailyqueer]

Rose Valland (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 1 November 1898 

RIP: 18 September 1980

Ethnicity: White - French

Occupation: Art historian, veteran

Note: One of the most decorated women in French history. She secretly recorded details of the Nazi plundering of National French and private Jewish-owned art from France; and, working with the French Resistance, she saved thousands of works of art.

[nazuuuhistory]

• Rose Valland, at the Jeu de Paume museum, colorized by me.

- Rose Valland, whose real name was Rosa Antonia Valland, was born on November 1, 1898 in Saint-Étienne-de-Saint-Geoirs (Isère). In the 1920s, she took art history courses at the École pratique des hautes études, the Ecole du Louvre and the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie. From 1932, as a volunteer attaché at the Museum of Foreign Paintings and Sculptures at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries, in Paris, she enriched the catalog of the collections.

From 1940, when the Nazis occupied her museum to store the works looted from Jewish families, she meticulously recorded the list of these first-class trinkets. Her investigations, conducted secretly and at the risk of her life, would lead to the repatriation and restitution of at least 45,000 works.

Finally, she hid several hundred works and informed the resistance fighters of the timetables of trains leaving for Germany, allowing the railway workers to stop the convoys and in particular to save more than 900 paintings by Gauguin, Degas, Modigliani and Renoir as well as 64 works by Picasso.

After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Rose Valland continued her work, helping to find and restore works of art. She was appointed heritage curator and worked for the Commission de récupération artistique (CRA). She also wrote a book, “Le Front de l’art”, published in 1961, which recounts her experiences during the war. She also met Joyce Heer, a secretary-interpreter at the United States Embassy, ​​who became her companion until her death. The two women shared an apartment at 4 rue de Navarre in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Rose Valland would reserve a place for her next to her in the family vault.

[culturefrancaise]

«Monuments Men»: Rose Valland, l'héroïne lesbienne oubliée - ADHEOS

[letsgostealthelouvre]

In French, this is “Epée de justice”, which Google translates as JUSTICE SWORD which is what I’m naming my first child if I ever procreate. (I will not, so I’ll probably have to name a cat that or something.) The sword itself is named Maximilian. It also sent me down a little rabbit hole, because beneath the title at the record it says: 

Artwork recovered after World War II, retrieved by the Office des Biens et Intérêts Privés (OBIP); to be returned to its rightful owner once they have been identified. Online records of all MNR ('National Museums Recovery') works can be found on the French Ministry of Culture's Rose Valland database.

Which means this sword was looted and recovered in Germany, likely as part of a cache of art or artifacts, otherwise they wouldn’t necessarily know, as it doesn’t appear to have been looted from France. 

There’s a link attached to the Rose Valland Database, which takes you to the ministry of culture’s “open heritage platform” where you can find all KINDS of crazy shit, but if you filter the “base” to Rose Valland, it gives you a catalogue of two thousand looted artworks from the war that have not been reunited with their owners or their heirs. 

And if you don’t know who Rose Valland is, you should. She was an extraordinary hero of WWII and the direct reason the Allies were able to recover so much of the art the Germans looted. 

[ID: A photograph of a sword, with roughly the bottom third of blade missing; the handle has two large curving guards, and an enormous knobby pommel on top. It is visibly aged, and has the look of a fantasy weapon about it.]

[garyconkling]

Seeing the Great Art Hitler Stole

Carole and I spent a week in Belgium where we saw two masterpieces stolen by the Nazis and retrieved by the Monuments Men. The works were worth saving and seeing.

Seeing art masterworks in person is always a pleasure. Seeing masterworks stolen by the Nazis and recovered by the Monuments Men makes viewing them even more pleasurable. Michelangelo’s Madonna and Child, his first sculpture to leave Italy in his lifetime, can be seen in an ancient Bruges church. The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, a polyptych painted by the Van Eyck brothers, is on display in St.…

[valkyries-things]

ROSE VALLAND // ART HISTORIAN

“She was a French art historian, member of the French Resistance, captain in the French military, and one of the most decorated women in French history. She secretly recorded details of the Nazi plundering of National French and private Jewish-owned art from France; and working with the French Resistance, she saved thousands of works of art.”

[3am-office-hours]

DAN has gotten so much more interesting for me after studying archaeology because I had to take an art and archaeology ethics course, where one of our big topics was locating and repatriating looted art from WW2. This was the first time that there was an international response to cultural heritage preservation, but the teams were TINY so the effort was somewhat scattered. Lots of the art that was saved was done so by museum staff and everyday people that recognized its cultural value. One of those people was a French art historian turned double agent named Rose Valland, who I feel like may have been a big inspiration for Noisette Tornade.

Anyways, if you like DAN and like history - Rose Valland and the Monuments Men are interesting rabbit holes to go down!

[silvanaabram]

#rosevalland (1898 - 1980). Storica dell'arte, anticonformista conservatrice presso la Galleria nazionale del #jeudepaume di Parigi, prende appunti giorno dopo giorno durante i 4 anni di occupazione nazista. Tiene accurata nota dei capolavori rubati dai nazisti nei musei francesi - presso le famiglie ebree, e accumulati nel Jeu de Paume in attesa di essere trasferiti in Germania. Si parla di almeno 100.000 opere. Rischiando la vita e grazie al suo dettagliato lavoro di detective, riusci' a individuare l'elenco dei depositi delle opere d'arte trafugate in Germania. Così - dopo la guerra, parte dei capolavori rubati - 60.000 opere furono riacquisite. Rose cataloga oltre 80.000 opere rubate e destinate alla restituzione, ai legittimi proprietari o eredi e ai Paesi aventi diritto. Lascia un patrimonio di 900 cataloghi dei cosiddetti MNR, (Musei nazionali recupero) testimonianza preziosa delle opere, per gli aventi diritto 🌹 Per incontrare la storia di questa straordinaria donna, esperta e amante dell'arte - vedi skyarte - Rose Valland, Spia per amore dell'arte 🖤 #arte #art #storiadellarte #pernondimenticare #artcurator #paris #europe #extraordinarypeople #influencer #woman #resistence #restitution #museum #justice https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn7zFAgrCsD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[marzipanandminutiae]

a real historical woman in a fiction movie: "oh Hardjaw McHotbod, I love you so much, you manly masculine man!"

the actual woman: ...and she lived with her female partner for forty years, raising Persian cats and preserving old buildings, after which they were buried together under one tombstone. she once said "wow, sure is interesting how I've never been attracted to a single man ever!"

[librotheque]

https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/

Le site POP : plateforme ouverte du patrimoine a été mis en place par le Ministère de la Culture en 2019. Cette plateforme rassemble, au même endroit, plusieurs bases de données patrimoniales déjà existantes :

Joconde : catalogue des collections

Muséofile : répertoire des musées de France

Mérimée : patrimoine architectural

Palissy : patrimoine mobilier

Mémoires : photographies

Enluminures : illustrations provenant de manuscrits médiévaux ou incunables.

Rose-Valland (MNR-Jeu de Paume) : ce catalogue présente des objets spoliés durant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale qui sont conservés dans des musées nationaux et en attente de retrouver leurs propriétaires.

Nous retrouvons ainsi 4 millions de notices (et d’autres sont régulièrement ajoutées), librement réutilisables, décrivant des photos, des œuvres d’art, des bâtiments et plus encore. Sur celles-ci on peut y lire des informations comme l’auteur de l’œuvre, ses dimensions, le lieu de conservation…

Il est possible de découvrir les ressources avec les sélections déjà proposées ayant, par exemple, pour thèmes « modes », « voyages »… Des recherches libres ou avancées sont également réalisables avec des mots-clés et des filtres permettant de préciser les résultats de la recherche.

Un bon moyen de découvrir la diversité du patrimoine français.

Médiathèque départementale de l'Isère

[coulisses-tv]

13h15 le samedi du 22 mai 2024 - Rose Valland, une espionne au musée sur France 2

http://dlvr.it/T8bMmK

[culturefrancaise]

Rose Valland, la résistante qui a espionné le pillage des œuvres d'art par les nazis

[alemicheli76]

Il blog consiglia "Rose Valland. Monument woman" di Franca Pellizzari, Morellini editore. Da non perdere!

Coraggio, determinazione, senso di giustizia: un’eroina della Resistenza francese che, a rischio della vita, spiò i nazisti durante l’occupazione di Parigi e riuscì a recuperare 60.000 opere d’arte trafugate alle famiglie ebree «Quando Rose riprende la bicicletta per tornare a casa è già buio e nell’aria c’è odore di neve; può fingere con se stessa che i brividi che la scuotono siano solo frutto…