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Thursday, December 3, Noon Robert M. Edsel’s fascination with the Monuments Men began while he was living in Florence, Italy, in the late 1990s. Standing on the Ponte Vecchio, he wondered how so many of Europe’s great monuments and works of art could have survived the destruction of World War II. Since then, he has conducted major scholarly research, acquired previously unseen original documents, and devoted his life to learning about the small group of Western Allied soldiers known as the “Monuments Men.” Their unprecedented mission was to rescue and preserve Europe’s greatest works of art from the Nazi looting machine. Mr. Edsel is the founder of The Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, which received the National Humanities Medal in 2007, and coproducer of The Rape of Europa, the Emmy nominated documentary about the Nazi looting of Europe’s cultural treasures during World War II. He is also the author of Rescuing Da Vinci, a photographic survey of the Nazis’ looting, and the efforts of the Monuments Men. At the same time Adolf Hitler was attempting to take over the western world, his armies were methodically seeking and hoarding the finest art treasures in Europe. The Fuehrer had begun cataloguing the art he planned to collect as well as the art he would destroy: "degenerate" works he despised. In a race against time, behind enemy lines, often unarmed, a special force of American and British museum directors, curators, art historians, and others, called the Monuments Men, risked their lives scouring Europe to prevent the destruction of thousands of years of culture. Focusing on the eleven-month period between D-Day and V-E Day, this fascinating account follows six Monuments Men and their impossible mission to save the world's great art from the Nazis. Mr. Edsel will bring with him the priceless , leatherbound Nazi photograph albums documenting specifics on the looting of civilization's art, including the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's David. |
