Rose Valland was one of the great unsung heroines of the 20th century—a quietly defiant art historian who risked her life to document Nazi art looting during the occupation of France. Working unnoticed in the Jeu de Paume museum, Valland passed on critical intelligence to the Resistance, ultimately helping to recover thousands of stolen works after the war. And yet, her name remains far too little known.
I’ve long admired Valland’s story, not only for her courage and intellect, but because her legacy touches something deeply personal for me: I once worked for an art collector whose family collections were looted by the Nazis. That history still reverberates. And so does the silence that surrounded Valland’s life—both her resistance work and her queerness, which she kept hidden in a time when secrecy was necessary for survival.
Michelle Young’s recent narrative non-fiction The Art Spy brings Valland vividly to life in a gripping, beautifully researched narrative. I’m so grateful Michelle took the time to thoughtfully respond to my questions and share her insight. Her answers offer a deeper glimpse into both the writing process and the historical legacy behind this non-fiction.
June, with its global Pride celebrations, feels like the perfect time to revisit the legacy of a gay heroine who lived and resisted in the shadows.
Below is our full conversation.
- Tosca Ruggieri: Rose Valland isn’t exactly a household name, yet her courage and quiet rebellion shaped history. What was the moment—or the detail—that made her unforgettable to you?
Michelle Young: Whenever I read about the brave women from World War II, I always ask myself, “What would I have done in their shoes?” I’ve always secretly wanted to be a spy but I as a petite woman with a terrible poker face, I had to admit that I would not have made it as the traditional cloak and dagger conception of a spy! But when I came across Rose Valland, I understood for the first time that anybody can be a hero(ine). People overlooked in normal times often have extraordinary skills valuable in war.
There were also so many similarities between Rose’s life and mine that were impossible to ignore. We were both art historians, we both learned German, I lived minutes away from her in multiple apartments in Paris, and as a child I went to many of the places she worked to track down Nazi-looted artwork, including salt mines in Austria. I also very much get how her brain worked. I can be similarly hyper focused on one goal, never giving up until it’s accomplished. But more importantly, I also understand what it is like to be an outsider, to be underestimated based on how you look. I think any woman, or anybody from a marginalized community, will understand Rose’s struggles and challenges deeply in their core. Hopefully now, through The Art Spy, they will be inspired to fight in whatever way they can, wherever they are.
- Tosca Ruggieri: I’ve long been fascinated by Rose Valland—partly because I once worked for an art collector whose father and grandfather both had their collections looted by the Nazis. That history feels deeply personal to me. During your research, did you encounter anyone whose family story echoed those same experiences of loss or survival?
Michelle Young: One of the first documents my husband and I opened in the French National Archives was about the denationalization of the Rothschild family. It was a sobering moment. A secondary storyline throughout The Art Spy follows Paul Rosenberg, the exclusive art dealer to Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Léger, and his family who flee France as the Nazis invade and are torn asunder by war. It was important to me to show the personal impact of plundering, and why and how the Nazis were looting art. The story of the Rosenbergs, represents the tragedy that befell the Jewish population in France and Europe as a whole. In addition, I also follow Paul’s brave son Alexandre Rosenberg, who fought for Charles de Gaulle’s Free French forces. The reader is brought into the battlefields of World War II from England to Africa to France. I tear up every time I re-read the last section of the book. liberation of Paris is such a beautiful, emotionally uplifting and optimistic moment in time.
- Tosca Ruggieri: Valland documented artworks at enormous personal risk. As you reconstructed her story, did you ever feel the weight of responsibility, not just as a writer but as a kind of witness yourself?
Michelle Young: Absolutely. I believe Rose was acutely concerned about her own legacy. She came under attack repeatedly, even when she was alive for daring to tell the truth about what happened in her country, and the deeds perpetrated not just by Nazis but also by her own countrymen. I believe that is one of the reasons she left behind everything, some of which were deliberately destroyed. While working through her documents, which are scattered throughout France and even in the United States, I felt that it was as if she knew someone like me would come later to piece together the breadcrumbs. I’m indefatigable about research in a similar way to her, and even if something won’t end up in the book, I will go about finding the answer just because I hate not knowing something.
There was also one major event—the burning of 500 modern art paintings in the courtyard of her museum by the Nazis—which she spent the rest of her life trying to prove really did happen. To tell The Art Spy from Rose’s perspective on this event, I needed a smoking gun since her account has continued to be questioned until the present day. I ended up finding multiple smoking guns, which I’ll let you discover in the book!
- Tosca Ruggieri: Were there gaps in the archive—moments when you had to imagine your way through silence? How did you decide what to invent and what to leave unsaid?
Michelle Young: You can’t invent anything in narrative non-fiction, at least in the true sense of the genre. Nothing in The Art Spy was imagined, and everything in quotes in the book was said or written by the characters. I believe that if you dig hard enough, you will find what you need to tell the story. It can take days, weeks, months or years to find what you’re looking for. But it is rare for only one person to have experienced something. As a writer, you must be absolutely dogged in tracking down that diary, the out-of-print newspaper, the never published manuscript, written or said by those who were there at the time.
There were a few moments in which I allowed myself to reflect, as an omniscient narrator, on what it would have meant for Rose at the time, but it is clear to the reader these are not directly from Rose’s thoughts or writings. One is when her partner Joyce is arrested by the Germans, just weeks after the Nazis take over Rose’s museum. It’s easy to imagine the pressure Rose is under at this moment and marvel about the fact that Rose never said a word about Joyce’s arrest. It must have been such a harrowing time for both of them.
- Tosca Ruggieri: Valland was a master of concealment. Did you find yourself having to ‘spy’ on her, in a sense, to understand her character?
Michelle Young: In regard to Rose in particular, I felt less like a spy and more like a detective. In writing characters, I always try to understand them psychologically, whether they are heroes or villains. The villains are often the most interesting. With every character, I create a kind of informal personality profile in my head, which helps explain their motivations and decisions throughout the course of the narrative. For The Art Spy, I also had to bring in my knowledge of both French culture and American culture, to help non-French readers understand the nuances of French society and how that impacted Rose in her career and as a person.
- Tosca Ruggieri: Rose Valland’s queerness is often treated as a footnote, yet it was an intrinsic part of her life—one more reason she had to remain invisible. How did you approach that part of her identity when writing The Art Spy?
Michelle Young: Indeed, Wikipedia is still wrong about her relationship and when she met her partner, Joyce Heer! Rose was not someone who shared much about her emotions, for good reason, but I knew if I could unlock the true story of her relationship with Joyce and the timeline, it would serve to really humanize the story. It also ended up inserting quite a bit of dramatic tension! I spent three months tracking down Joyce, almost exclusively working on this aspect. If any readers are interested in knowing more, I wrote about finding her in Narratively.
- Tosca Ruggieri: Did writing The Art Spy change how you look at museums and private collections today?
Michelle Young: I had been writing about art restitution before working on The Art Spy and I continue to cover the most interesting stories I come across for Hyperallergic and The Forward. The biggest thing I learned is that the art market is very opaque and even if there is a listed provenance for a work of art, it doesn’t mean that it is clean. For me, however, the story of art looting and restitution is ultimately about the families who were looted from, not about the museums or private collections. For my most recent story, I drove to a remote part of Colorado to visit the heir of the Nazi-looted Pissarro painting at the heart of a 25-year legal dispute between his family and the Kingdom of Spain and the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid. These cases are never about money, but about justice and about honoring the stories of those who fought, lost, died, or escaped alongside these works of art.
- Tosca Ruggieri: How do you think Valland would feel walking through a museum today, seeing restitution plaques or hearing contemporary debates around repatriation?
Michelle Young: First, I think she would be pleased that her prediction came true—that a lot of looted art would reappear fifty plus years after World War II. But she would also almost assuredly feel that not enough is being done. While there are some frameworks that have really pushed forward the discussion and have put pressure on the moral and legal imperatives for Nazi-looted art restitution, there are not enough binding legal statutes to govern the process in any country. In America, we need more state laws that enable heirs to sue for their artworks, even when they are held abroad.
- Tosca Ruggieri: In a world flooded with spectacle, Rose Valland’s quiet, determined resistance feels radically modern. What do you think her legacy teaches us about power—and silence?
Michelle Young: American society has long valued the person that is the loudest in the room, the person who is the most confident. But Rose Valland shows us that quiet determination is extremely powerful, and maybe even more importantly, how much we need to fight for causes beyond ourselves. When the Nazis took over her museum, she doggedly spied and documented their crimes because she firmly believed that one day, they would lose the war and that her intelligence would be used for not only art restitution but for holding the perpetrators to account in war tribunals. Post-war, she never let go of her conviction that art restitution was a moral imperative, even when it made her unpopular or it became detrimental to her career.
- Tosca Ruggieri: If Valland were alive today, what book do you think she’d keep by her bedside?
Michelle Young: Hard question! She was quite religious, so maybe the Bible. But also, she read a lot of art magazines and periodicals. I found many in her papers that she saved. One book that I can say for certain she had in her collection was the memoir of André François-Poincet, the former French Ambassador of Germany. He was supportive of her career but also warned her not to write the sequel to her memoir due to political reasons. There’s a lot to be uncovered in Rose’s post war life that a wonderful French historian I worked with is digging deep on and I hope her discoveries will be revealed soon!
