About the Co-Directors of the Program

The program is run and co-taught by a mother and son team, Diane Joy Charney, Yale professor and Tutor-in-Writing for the Bass Writing Program at Yale University, and Noah Charney, best-selling author and professor of art history.

Diane Joy Charney holds a doctorate from Duke University, and has taught at Yale since 1984, where she is Tutor-in-Writing for the Bass Writing Program. Her experience spans many genres, including restaurant and book reviews (especially of first novels), essays, poetry, memoir, and coaching and encouraging writers of all ages. As a lifelong educator, she delights in helping writers find their own voice and show their work to best advantage.

Noah Charney is a professor and an international best-selling author of fiction and non-fiction, specializing in the fields of art history and art crime. He is the founder and president of ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes against Art, a non-profit research group (www.artcrime.info). His work has been praised in such forums as The New York Times Magazine, Time Magazine, The Sunday Times (UK), Los Angeles Times, BBC Radio, National Public Radio, El Pais, Corriere della Sera, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Charney is the author of the international best-selling novel, The Art Thief (Atria/Simon & Schuster 2007). He is the editor of Art & Crime: Exploring the Dark Side of the Art World (Praeger 2009) and author of the Museum Time series, guides to museums in Spain (geoPlaneta 2010). His art history column for ArtInfo has been recognized as one of the best online, and he writes regularly for magazines. Charney’s latest book is Stealing the Mystic Lamb: the True History of the World’s Most Coveted Masterpiece (PublicAffairs 2010). Trained in art history at The Courtauld Institute and Cambridge University, Charney has taught for many years, for Yale and Brown Universities, and in Cambridge, Florence, Rome, and Ljubljana. Charney is now a professor at the American University of Rome.

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