Mary Lane

Mary MacPherson Lane is a non-fiction writer and journalist specializing in Western European art and history.

Mary MacPherson Lane
BornOctober 1987
Lynchburg, Virginia, U.S.
OccupationJournalist, art historian

Lane gained recognition as the chief European art reporter for The Wall Street Journal[1] and for publishing numerous scoops on the art trove of Hildebrand Gurlitt. One of Adolf Hitler's main art dealers, Gurlitt bequeathed a collection of roughly 1,300 artworks, many looted from museums and Jewish European families, to his son Cornelius Gurlitt.[2][3] Her book-length narrative on Nazi-looted art was published in 2019 by Hachette under the title Hitler's Last Hostages: Looted Art and the Soul of the Third Reich.[4]

Early life

Lane was born and grew up in Virginia. She graduated from Episcopal High School, outside of Washington, D.C. Lane spent her senior year of high school in Beijing, where she became proficient in Mandarin Chinese.[5] Lane worked as a Chinese-English interpreter in Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Education

In 2010, Lane graduated from Middlebury College with degrees in German and Chinese. She received a DAAD Journalism Scholarship in 2010 and one of five Fulbright Journalism Scholarships for 2010 through 2011, both based in Berlin.[6]

Career

Lane began her professional journalism career writing for the Associated Press in 2009 from their Berlin bureau, covering the effects of the euro crisis on Berlin's legal sex workers.[7][8]

She wrote in German for the Berliner Zeitung on a DAAD journalism scholarship in 2010. Lane began at the Wall Street Journal as a Fulbright scholar in early 2011 as part of their Berlin-based euro crisis team.

French designer and art collector Hubert de Givenchy worked with Lane on her first major coverage of European art and the art market. In a trio of interviews between Givenchy and Lane that the Journal published in 2012, they discussed his collection of artworks by sculptor François Girardon,[9] Givenchy's dressing of Rose Kennedy[10] for the funeral of her son, President John F. Kennedy, and the designer's friendship with Audrey Hepburn.[11]

In 2013, Lane became the Journal's chief European art reporter, responsible for the paper's coverage of auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's, including the rivalry between the two auction houses.[12][13][14] This coverage was heavily investment-focused, including analysis of the volatile prices of contemporary artists[15] and the increased presence of Chinese collectors in the European art market.[16]

Lane also led the Wall Street Journal's coverage of European galleries and art fairs including Art Basel[17] and Frieze,[18] gallery shows in London and Paris, and exhibitions at prominent European museums including the Louvre, the Tate,[19] the Rijksmuseum,[20][21] and the Kunsthistorisches Museum.[22][23]

Sotheby's auctioned a $47.9 million drawing by Raphael in December 2012, making the work the most expensive drawing ever auctioned. Lane published an investigation in June 2013 documenting that the anonymous buyer was billionaire financier Leon Black.[24]

Lane was the first international journalist granted an interview with Louvre director Jean-Luc Martinez in October 2013.[25]

In 2014, she became the first journalist in nearly a decade to conduct an interview with German artist Gerhard Richter.[26]

Gurlitt case

Between November 2013 and late 2015, Lane published a series of scoops on the front page and numerous articles inside of the Wall Street Journal about the art trove of Hildebrand Gurlitt, one of Hitler's primary art dealers.[27][28][29]

In February 2012, the German government in Bavaria had confiscated the works from Gurlitt's son, Cornelius Gurlitt, but had kept the find a secret, in violation of the Washington Principles, a set of international guidelines on looted art that Germany had signed in 1998. The collection of over 1,200 paintings, sculptures and works on paper included pieces by Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, George Grosz, and Henri Matisse.[30] Lane was the first to publish the news of how Cornelius Gurlitt decided to bequeath his art cache to the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland and that the museum was prepared to accept the estate.[31]

Much of Lane's work tracked two oil paintings stolen by the Nazis from Jewish Europeans, Matisse's "Woman with a Fan" and "Two Riders on a Beach" by Max Liebermann, both present in the Gurlitt trove. After four years of holding the works, Germany returned them to the families of the original owners.[32]

Alt-right activist, white supremacist, and Holocaust denier Carolyn Yeager has targeted Lane's coverage of art collector and World Jewish Congress head Ronald Lauder and Lauder's calls for increased investigation of artworks looted from Jewish Europeans by the Nazis currently held in German museums.[33]

Lane researched the Gurlitt family and Hitler's art looting programs for her first non-fiction book, Hitler's Last Hostages: Looted Art and the Soul of the Third Reich. Aevitas Creative Management represents Lane.[34][35]

Since leaving the Journal in December 2015, Lane has worked as a European art contributor for The New York Times, ARTnews,[36] and contributed to Mike Pesca's reporting at Slate.[37]

Works
  • Hitler's last hostages : looted art and the soul of the Third Reich, New York : PublicAffairs, 2019. ISBN 9781610397360, OCLC 1048445514[38]

References
  1. "Mary M. Lane". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  2. Lane, Mary. "Inside the Deathbed Deal With Cornelius Gurlitt to Return Art Looted by Nazis". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  3. Lane, Mary. "The Strange Tale of Nazis, Mr. Gurlitt and the Lost Masterpieces". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  4. ISBN 9781610397360.
  5. Lane, Mary. "MaryLaneWSJ". Trends Map. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  6. "Students land impressive list of fellowships, academic awards". Middlebury College. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  7. Morrison, Shamarria. "Black in Berlin". The Shamor. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  8. Lane, Mary. "Sex selling for less amid economic downturn". Times Free Press. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  9. Lane, Mary. "The de Givenchy Collection… From the Age of the Sun King". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  10. Lane, Mary. "Hubert de Givenchy". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  11. Lane, Mary. "Hubert de Givenchy Remembers Audrey Hepburn". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  12. Lane, Mary. "Sotheby's Hammers Rival" (PDF). The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  13. Lane, Mary. "Sotheby's Continues Streak in London's Auction". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  14. Lane, Mary. "Auction Houses Muscle in on Art Galleries' Turf". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  15. Lane, Mary. "Young Artists on a Rocket". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  16. Lane, Mary. "Chinese Art Collectors Are Buying More Works on Paper". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  17. Lane, Mary. "Art Basel: Mirrors, Mirrors on the Walls". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  18. "Frieze Art Fair Embraces Past With Caution". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  19. "Tate Modern Tracks Pop Art's Global Heft". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  20. "Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum Shows Some of Its 200,000 Photo". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  21. "Alain de Botton Brings His Views on Art to Three Museums". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  22. Lane, Mary. "Jeweler to the Czars". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  23. Lane, Mary. "The Secret Life of Lucian Freud". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  24. Lane, Mary. "Financier Leon Black Buys $48 Million Raphael Drawing". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  25. Lane, Mary. "The Louvre's New Populist Leader". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  26. Lane, Mary. "Gerhard Richter at 82: Art Is Still 'Sublime'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  27. "The Strange Tale of Nazis, Mr. Gurlitt and the Lost Masterpieces". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  28. "Swiss Museum Close to Accepting Nazi-Era Art Bequest". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  29. Lane, Mary. "Germany to Comb Museums for Nazi-Looted Art". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  30. "The Strange Tale of Nazis, Mr. Gurlitt and the Lost Masterpieces". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  31. Lane, Mary. "Two Nazi-Looted Paintings Set for Return to Heirs of Original Owners". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  32. Lane, Mary. "Two Nazi-Looted Paintings Set for Return to Heirs of Original Owners". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  33. Lane, Mary. "Lauder Urges Germany to Comb Museums for Nazi Loot". Carolyn Yeager Writings, Podcasts, Views. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  34. "Bestsellers & Award Winners". Aevitas. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  35. "Contributing Clients". Aevitas. Retrieved April 14, 2018.
  36. Lane, Mary M. "Mary M. Lane, Author at ARTnews". ARTnews. Retrieved September 14, 2019.
  37. "Hitler's Art Dealer". slate.com.
  38. "The Great Art Stolen by Hitler". nytimes.
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