Gary Vikan will lead a talk “Two Museum Thefts that Made Headlines in Baltimore"

In many ways, Gary Vikan could be the center of a Dan Brown novel.

He has spent decades in the art world, and has seen his share of things that many would be surprised to know goes on behind the rich, lush curtains and velvet ropes.

But as Vikan is quick to point out, what he has seen and has written about is the truth, unlike Brown whose books are entirely fiction.

“At least I tell the truth,” Vikan said.

For Vikan’s career as an expert in medieval art as well as serving as director of Walters Art Museum in Baltimore from 1994 to 2013, his mission is to find out the truth — of origin, of artist, of subject and more.

And on Sunday, Oct. 15, Vikan will travel from his Baltimore home to Hagerstown to give a lecture titled “Two Museums Thefts That Made Headlines in Baltimore” at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts. The free talk starts at 2:30 p.m., followed by a book signing. The talk is hosted by The Washington County Museum of Fine Arts and Singer Society.

Vikan recently returned from Paris where he had been “nailing down some details” on his newly finished book about the Shroud of Turin. Home in Baltimore, Vikan took time to answer questions by phone about the art world and his upcoming lecture.

“This shroud appears in history in the 1350s for the first time, and that’s about the time it was made,” he explained. “And it appeared in a tiny little wooden church in a town about 15 miles south of Troyes, which is an hour and a half by train south and east of Paris.”

Today the town of Lirey, France, where the Shroud was seen, Vikan estimates, has only about 100 people.

“It was amazing to be kind of feeling the ethos, or the presence of the power — I don’t know what it is,” he said. “It’s sort of like when you go to a holy site some place or national monument where something important has happened. It has, at least for me, the power to evoke the past,” he said.

“The little road that connect Troyes with the little town, in fact, is a Roman road that’s been there for 2,000 years. You can just image the pilgrims coming along this road from Troyes and pitching tents outside the church in this little town in 1353, which is only five years after the Black Death. It was kind of a way of giving reality in my own head to a moment in time more than 600 years ago,” Vikan said.

Delving into the past

Growing up in Minnesota, Vikan was driven at a young age to learn.

“I was a good student. I was a compulsive student,” he said. “Even as a second-grader, I wanted all to get all A’s. I don’t know why. I don’t think it was that crazy in 1952 or 1953. In any event, I kept on being a scholar. Even as a young kid, I loved to learn stuff. I just excelled at learning stuff.”

Vikan believes he might have become a music historian.

“Or a performer, if I had any talent in that area,” he said.

He earned his undergraduate degree from Carleton College in his home state. There he learned about art history, where he took a couple of classes “and found out that I was good at it.” Vikan eventually received his doctorate from Princeton University.

“The part that I liked the best was medieval cathedrals,” he said. “I found them very romantic, and powerful and spiritual. So because I was both good at art history, I found it compelling, especially medieval art history.”

He said one medieval cathedral that captivated him the most was Chartes Cathedral in Chartes, France.

“I had never been to Europe. I was about 18, 19 at the time. I was doing a paper at the time on Chartes Cathedral, and I was looking at photographs that most, probably all, were in black and white,” he recalled. “It just amazed me. I was brought up as a Lutheran in a little Lutheran church with stained-glass windows, and I couldn’t imagine a space that was 120 feet tall, and was lit essentially by the light transmitted through stained glass. It really captured my imagination. It really didn’t care about the structural history, but what I cared about was their spiritual import; what they meant to people. I still feel that when I go into those cathedrals.”

From tours to books

Before becoming the director the Walters Art Museum, Vikan was the museum’s assistant director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Medieval Art from 1985 to 1994. During his time at the museum, he would often be called upon to lead tours and talks.

‘I would tell people about art history; some were interested, some were not and some pretended to be interested,” he said. “And I wasn’t interested in telling stories that bored people. I didn’t want to tell stories how this or that object fit into the history of art, but how this or that object ended up in Baltimore, Maryland.”

What he found was that people became more engaged when he retold the piece’s personal stories.

“Art history seems like an obscure game to people. If you’re not in it, you can’t penetrate it. ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about the history of music.’ ‘I don’t know what Baroque music is.’ ‘I don’t know what ancient art looks like.’ ‘Only people who have studied it, can have an opinion,’’ he said. “When you talk about the travels about old things, or fairly new things, everyone can have an opinion. It’s a more democratic conversation.”

Eventually, those talks turned into a regular radio show called “Postcards from the Walters” on the local NPR affiliate WYPR. He did 60 episodes of five minutes each that retold those stories about the objects in the Walters.

“None of them were an art history lesson,” he said. “Some of them revelations the museum’s past. Some about very odd and wonderful works in the museum. I found it easy to write it, and the show was very popular.”

The shows were about 500 words each, and Vikan rationalized that if he could write 500 words, he could write 5,000 and tell longer and more intricate stories.

“The only problem for me was making an arch out of it. There were individual vignettes, but how did they relate besides the fact that I was telling the story?” he said. “I had to get editorial advice on how to build the arch and establish threads of thought. But really, the main point of it the voice from which they were told, and that was the thread, I think.”

He went on to write several books including “Early Byzantine Pilgrimage Art” (2010); “Postcards from the Walters” (2012); “From the Holy Land to Graceland” (2012), and his memoir, “Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director” (2016).

In addition to finishing his book on Shroud of Turin, he is working on another memoir about growing up in Minnesota in the 1950s. He said he’s found Google as well as YouTube helpful. He said he’s been able to go back and watch old news programs from his youth. He pointed out that the day of the interview — Oct. 4 — was actually the 60th anniversary of Sputnik in space, and he can still recall that day.

“My father and I were standing in the den — it was October so it was very cold in Minnesota — and you could see at 4 in the morning, we could see this faint little light thing going across the sky,” he said. “It was pretty amazing.”

He said by rewatching these moments, he could “gauge my own reaction.”

“I wasn’t afraid of Russia. I was certainly was afraid of nuclear war. I wasn’t afraid that Russia was going to take us over and eat whatever the hell they eat, or there would be no churches left,” he said. “That wasn’t real to me. But that was a driving force for some people. In the late ’50s and ’60s, a lot of people thought that Russia was going to take us over. But I never thought that.”

Stealing art

One of the stories Vikan will recount in Hagerstown is about the story of a Renoir painting called “Paysage Bords de Seine.” The 1879 painting, which is about as big as a napkin, was donated to the Baltimore Museum of Art by Saidie Adler May, but went missing for more than 60 years. The painting was allegedly purchased at a flea market in Harpers Ferry, W.Va., for $7, but is worth about $20,000.

“That’s the easiest story to tell in the whole book,” he said.

He said “it’s kind of a romantic story. It’s a gift from a boyfriend to a girlfriend, probably a Christmas gift. It took 63 years to find its way back home. It’s kind of interesting. The reason it made its way back was the woman was about to die. She wanted to get it back to where it belonged.”

The person who stole the Renoir worked at the museum, who was also stealing from other places.

“It was never reported stolen, it was just reported missing. They thought it was somewhere in the museum, but they never called the police,” he said.

Vikan said art is a lot harder today to pilfer from museums than it was, say, 50 years ago.

“When I was beginning in the museum business, things that were in museums were very easily accessible to staff,” he said. “Things could wander out. I remember a conservator at the National Gallery was taking medieval manuscript pieces home to work on them. It didn’t strike me as odd. ... I remember having to bring things to exhibitions all the time in this old MGB I had at the time that overheated constantly. I was driving medieval books around in his car that barely ran. That would never happen now at any credible museum.”

One reason there isn’t as many thefts from museums today is not only because of the advancement of technology, but also the laws that govern access to objects are stricter.

His book, “Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director,” contains more stories of the trafficking of antiquities, and the art world’s ambivalence on obtaining objects that might have been stolen. He will share many of those stories for that evening.

After his talk at the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, he will open the floor for questions.

“In any event, a few people would have read the book. A few more would have claimed to read the book. A few more would say to intend to read the book,” he said. “Basically, they’re there and will be part of the event.”

Vikan hopes that the audience will feel less like they’re in an art history class, but more like if they’re listening to a storyteller.

“I hope they find that it’s entertaining, and inviting themselves to think in new ways of what goes on,” he said. “If I would be in the symphony business, the orchestra business or the movie business —you know, things that people consume as outsiders, and they consume it to the point where they think that it’s perfect and buttoned-down and under control. When they discover it’s not perfect, or buttoned down and under control at all, it opens the door of inquiry that will attune them to all these articles when ... a Renoir was stolen from auction house south of Paris. That will pique their interest and they’ll think of the little Renoir on the wall of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Or the $10,000 reward to return the Isabella Garden Stewart Museum objects and how that’s going to run out on Dec. 31, and they’ll wonder where this stuff is.”

If you go

WHAT: Gary Vikan talks on “Two Museum Thefts that Made Headlines in Baltimore"

WHEN: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 15

WHERE: Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, 401 Museum Drive, Hagerstown

COST: Free

CONTACT: Go to www.wcmfa.org or 301-739-5727

MORE: There will be a book signing after the lecture.