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Noah Charney gives a talk: “A Short History of Art Forgery” at The Royal Geographical Society - April 2011 NPR “Think” WNYC “The Leonard Lopate Show”
We are pleased to announce the release of Noah Charney’s much-anticipated new book, Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece, published by PublicAffairs. It tells the story of The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck, which is both the most important painting ever made and the most frequently stolen artwork in history. The book tells of the thirteen crimes of which this one, monumental, 2-ton altarpiece was the victim over the 600 years since it was painted, surviving adventures among forgers, renegade vicars, thieving curators, Austrian double-agents, Napoleon, Goring, and Hitler, to name a few. Stealing the Mystic Lamb has already received rave reviews, and is available at fine bookstores, and at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can meet Noah Charney at one of his rare US appearances at any of the events below.”
Book Tour
Sunday, October 10 / WILLIAMSTOWN MA 3:00pm Lecture and booksigning Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute 225 South Street Williamstown, MA 01267
Tuesday, October 12 / NEW HAVEN 7:00pm Talk / Q&A / Booksigning Atticus Bookstore 1082 Chapel Street Wednesday, October 13 / WASHINGTON DC 7:00pm – 8pm Talk / Q&A / Booksigning Corcoran Gallery of Art 500 Seventeenth Street NW Washington DC 20006
Thursday, October 14 / NEW YORK CITY 7:00pm Talk / Q&A / Booksigning Borders Park Ave. and 57th St
Monday, October 18 / LONDON 6:30pm Talk / Q&A The Courtauld Institute The Strand, London
Praise for Stealing the Mystic Lamb
The chapter titles in "Stealing the Mystic Lamb" sound like Indiana Jones movies – “Thieves of Revolution and Empire,” “The Magician in the Red Turban,” “Raising the Buried Treasure” – and they’re just as action-packed. Considered a Renaissance first, a benchmark of artistic grandiosity, the treasure involved is a large 12-panel oil painting, the "Ghent Altarpiece" (also called "Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.") Since its 1432 completion, the masterpiece has been stolen seven times, more than any other work in history.
STEALING THE MYSTIC LAMB With a novelist’s sense of structure and tension, the author adds an easy familiarity with the techniques of oil painting and with the intertwining vines of art and political and religious history. He begins near the end of World War II. As the Reich’s military fortunes crumbled, the Allies scrambled to find where the Nazis concealed their tens of thousands of stolen artworks, many slated for Hitler’s proposed “super museum.” Among them was the Altarpiece. Charney pauses to describe the large work, which comprises 20 individual painted panels, hinged together. Art historians admire it not just for its supreme craftsmanship—described clearly by the author—but also for its historical significance as the world’s first major oil painting. Charney also lists a number of “firsts” that the work represents (e.g., the first to use directed spotlighting) and sketches the biography of van Eyck, which makes Shakespeare’s seem richly detailed by comparison. Commissioned to create the altarpiece for the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, van Eyck took some six years to complete it. As religious and political strife waxed and waned, the painting was always in danger. The Calvinists didn’t like it (the Catholics promptly hid it); Napoleon, perhaps history’s greatest art thief, craved it; a cathedral fire threatened it; the Germans came for it in WWI and again in WWII. Even now, one panel remains at large, though some argue that the replacement copy is actually the original. A brisk tale of true-life heroism, villainy, artistry and passion. -Kirkus Reviews (15 July 2010) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You may buy the book here: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
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NEW ADDITION: Noah Charney was invited by the charity Venice in Peril to talk about his twelve favorite things about Venice. The selection was published by Venice in Peril in the Fall 2009. View PDF. |
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On 10 August 2009, ARCA Director Noah Charney was featured on CBC Radio's Q with Jian Ghomeshi. In the interview guest hosted by Jane Farrow, Charney discusses ARCA's Masters Program in International Art Crime studies and he describes the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to art crime. |
Art Crime @ Yale (Download
syllabus PDF)
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CRIME WRITING COURSE Noah Charney will be teaching a new course on Crime Writing for Brown University. The course will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia October 8-13, 2012. For more information visit Brown University’s website (http://www.brown.edu/ce/adult/ljubljana/) |