Art Movements

When World War II broke out, museums across France took their most precious artworks off the walls and hid them away for safekeeping from bombing. But no one suspected the greatest threat to these treasures: the Nazis’ massive art looting scheme, wherein they sought to plunder museums to bolster the image of their own galleries, take modernist (or, in their words, “degenerate”) art down from view, and disenfranchise Jewish art collectors — while raking in money for themselves along the way. When Nazis began storing stolen pieces in the Jeu de Paume museum in Paris, none of them realized that the building’s petite, bookish curator understood German. Throughout their occupation of Paris, curator and art historian Rose Valland was taking detailed notes of their crimes, and in the process, saved scores of masterpieces that otherwise may have been lost forever.Although Valland published a popular account of her daring deeds after the war (part of which was turned into a Hollywood film), there is still so much that