Robert Edsel, director of the Monuments Men Foundation in Dallas, Texas and an award-winning author and producer, will deliver a multi-media lecture on the work of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) section of the Allied Armies and its officers during and after World War II on Tuesday, Oct. 12 at 7:30 p.m. in Hudson Hall in the Mary Stuart Rogers Performing Arts Center. The MFAA (Monuments) officers were a group of men and women from 13 nations who joined the military during World War II and helped rescue Europe’s artistic and cultural patrimony from the hands of the Nazis.
Edsel’s lecture, Is Art Worth a Life? Hitler, War, and the Monuments Men, traces the Nazi looting of Europe’s art treasures in the late 1930s and 1940s and the work of the Monuments officers to recover the looted art treasures during and after the World War II. Many of these Monuments officers would go on to become important cultural leaders in post World War II America, including James Rorimer, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Lincoln Kirstein, founder of the New York City Ballet; and Kenneth Lindsay, professor of art history at SUNY, Binghamton, among others. Robert Edsel is a former Texas oilman who has devoted the past 10 years of his life to gaining recognition for the Monuments officers and the important work they did during World War II to save Europe’s artistic and cultural patrimony. He is the author of two books, Rescuing Da Vinci and The Monuments Men; was the co-producer of The Rape of Europa, the Emmy award-winning PBS documentary; was publisher of Beyond the Dreams of Avarice: The Hermann Goering Collection, by Nancy H. Yeide; and was the recipient of the President’s Call to Service Award in 2008.
Financial support for Edsel’s lecture has been provided by the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, the College of Law Speakers Series, the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Office, the Center for Ancient Studies and Archaeology, and the Hogue-Sponenburgh Lectureship Fund of the Department of Art History at Willamette University. Additional support has been provided by the City of Salem’s Transient Occupancy Tax funds and the Oregon Arts Commission. Admission to the lecture is complimentary, and Edsel will be available to sign copies of his book after the lecture.