Mary Lane

Mary MacPherson Lane (born October 1987) is an American non-fiction writer and journalist specializing in Western European art and history. Lane gained recognition as the chief European art reporter for The Wall Street Journal, 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. 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. 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. 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.