What does the world look like without art? We have been given a glimpse during quarantine and the answer is: desolate.

Since March 14th when the “Stay-At-Home” order was put in place, everything has shut down. We have been told to stay indoors, which means even public art is closed. Art has always been a place of solace, of enlightenment and learning for me--this is why I started this blog, as well as my desire to share with others what I see in New York. 

But now there has been this unsettling silence not only here in New York, but across the globe.  There have been days when it feels as if all creativity and freedom of expression and connection have simply disappeared.  In the newspaper it has been referred to as a “Pause.”

It is difficult to explain how art, for me, has always been the place I turn when I am stuck, when I literally have no answers--so even though I haven’t been able to walk to Central Park to visit the Obelisk, “Cleopatra’s Needle,” that incredible 69-foot, over 3,000 year old monument that somehow always holds “answers” for me, I have been able to “visit” it on the internet.  And I have, every day now.  But this “Pause” got me thinking about other times in history when museums and the arts were threatened and shut down.  

During WWII, all of Europe’s art treasures were threatened by the Nazis.  Under Hitler’s orders, ⅕ of Europe’s artistic heritage were plundered, and a full-scale plan was in place to destroy hundreds of museums, libraries, and places of worship.  

But European and American museums fought back.

1936 evacuation of the Prado Museum. Eventually the art treasures arrived early 1939 in Geneva, in part thanks to the International Committee for the Safeguard of Spanish Art Treasures.

Even before the war started in 1939, The Louvre’s, Jacques Jaujard oversaw a massive evacuation plan of all its art.  With the help of curators, guards, students and employees who worked near The Louvre, paintings, statues, drawings, tapestries, books were loaded into boxes and onto trucks and carried out of Paris and dispersed throughout the French countryside. These people risked their lives to save art. 

Ten days before the declaration of war, Jacques Jaujard ordered that 3,690 paintings, as well as sculptures and works of art started to be packed. Right the Grande Galerie of the Louvre emptied. Images Archives des musées nationaux.

From August to December 1939, trucks carried to safety the treasures of the Louvre. Left, “Liberty guiding the people”, center, the box containing the Victory of Samothrace. Images Archives des musées nationaux.

Rose Valland at the Jeu de Paume in 1934, as an unpaid volunteer. Her assistant curator job was only made permanent -and paid- in 1941. Collection Camille Garapont / Association La Mémoire de Rose Valland

When the Nazis took Paris and took over The Louvre, they forbid any French officials to stay, except for this 42-year-old French assistant curator, Rose Valland. 

The Nazis did not know that this unpaid assistant spoke German, or how brave and determined she was, despite her shy and unassuming appearance.  For 4 years, Valland had to pretend she did not understand the Nazis as she secretly wrote daily reports: recording what art was stolen, to whom it belonged, and where it would be sent.  She was to bring these reports to Jaujard weekly, without ever being caught.

When asked why she risked her life to save art, she said it was a choice, a small part she could play to “save some of the beauty of the world.”

After the war it took Jaujard 8 pages to describe Valland’s all that she did to save art.  His report concludes, “she would obtain the Legion of Honour and the Resistance medal. She received the ‘Medal of Freedom’ for her service, having accepted to endure four years of daily renewed risks in order to save our works of art.” 

We are only at the beginning of this pandemic, and we do not know how long this will last or what will happen next, but this “pause” in art, this “pause” in our communal sharing of imagination, beauty, and different points of view, I am going to look at it as just that: a pause.  The world of art will be reignited again with a force and a fearlessness that art has always possessed.