01 November 2025

Rose Valland mania

by Marc Masurovsky

Many books have been published about Rose Valland, the unsung French heroine of WWII in her quest to recover and protect France’s cultural heritage. One might ask if her idea of cultural heritage also included works produced on French territory by Jewish artists who elected to live and work in France before ending up in the crematoria and gas chambers of the Final Solution. The answer to that question lies in the copious notes she left behind.

Regardless of how she felt (the subject of another text), it might be instructive to give you a quick overview of the many volumes and visual productions that have created a "persona" for Rose Valland as a creature of the French museum world who rose above the fray to do the unimaginable in times of war—put her life on the line to document the plunder of art collections during the Nazi occupation of France (1940-1944). She was passionately devoted to a certain idea of the cultural heritage of her nation, ready to defend it at any cost, even if it meant sacrificing her own life. Truly admirable.

Here is a brief recap of monographs published in French and English since 1961 when the “Front de l’Art (Art Front)”, Rose Valland’s account of her wartime defense of French cultural heritage appeared in its original French edition at Editions Plon. There followed two updated French editions of the “Art Front” in 1997 and 2014. The first English-language edition of the “Art Front” came out in 2024.

Books

1961 
Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, Plon, 262 pages

1997 
 Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, RMN 262 pages

2008 
 Rose Valland : Résistante pour l’art, Frédéric Destremeau

2009 
Rose Valland, Capitaine Beaux Arts, Tome 1 Claire Bouilhac, Catel, Emmaneul Polack

2014 
 Le front de l’art, défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945 Rose Valland, RMN (update of the 1997 edition), 403 pages

2016 
Le livre de Rose, Emmanuelle Favier (Editions les Pérégrines)

2024 
 L’espionne à l’œuvre, Jennifer Lesieur

2024 
The Art Front : The Defense of French Collections, 1939-1945, Rose Valland

Rose Valland’s notebooks are translated and annotated in an English-language version, courtesy of the Monuments Men and Women Foundation. 

2025 
The Train, John Frankenheimer

2014
 “The Monuments Men” starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett (in the role of Rose Valland).

2015 
Rose Valland, l’espionne aux tableaux (the Art Spy) by Brigitte Chevet. Aired on May 4, 2015, as an episode of La case de l’oncle Doc

Rose Valland mania spread to the French educational sector.

Schools and institutes named after Rose Valland

Collège Rose Valland, Saint-Etienne-de-Saint-Geoirs

Ecole élémentaire publique Rose Valland, Le Mans

Ecole Rose Valland

Institutes

Even a research institute bears her name in Berlin, Germany.

Rose Valland Institut, Berlin

Parting thoughts

We cannot cry over spilled milk. Strong-willed women (Evelyn Tucker, cultural advisor to the US zone of occupation in Austria, and Ardelia Hall, cultural officer in the US Department of State (1944-1961), Rose Valland, cultural officer in charge of recoveries of French cultural treasures) fought an uphill battle to implement Allied restitution policies so as to provide some measure of justice to the victims of National Socialism. 

Life is what it is. Words are one thing. Deeds are quite another.  Something that these three outstanding women found out and fought through in order to assert a policy that was quickly reneged by the very people who shaped them. Alea jacta est.

We haven't forgotten them and we honor them. Role models. We need them now more than ever.

Sources

Photo courtesy of "The Collector."




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