Linda Moore
Linda Moore: The first time I visited the Prado Museum in Madrid, I followed my Spanish art history professor around the hallowed but stuffy galleries. The actual masterpieces, El Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Goya, became part of a tumultuous year I spent at the Complutense University of Madrid.
In those times, Franco, the Fascist dictator who controlled Spain fought anyone who wanted to end his tyranny. University days were spent running from police on horseback swinging clubs hitting anyone in their path, until the government closed the university -for four months. I learned that leadership matters, that society is not separate from politics and I pursued a major in political science. I went on to graduate school to study Latin American politics at Stanford University.
I’ve traveled many miles since then (102 countries or so) and took including some detours, but I always came back to the art and the love of all things Hispanic. As a wife and mom, I left research in politics and opened an art gallery in San Diego specializing in Hispanic art and never looked back.
I have served on art museum boards to support and spread the joy that visual art has brought me. Art provides aesthetic pleasure, introduces us to fascinating personalities, and informs us about histories, cultures, and struggles of the times in which it was created.
When I am not traveling or attending an art exhibit, I can be found in San Diego or Kauai watching films, reading alongside my husband who collects 18th and 19th century travel narratives, and sharing photos of my grandchildren with my wine-drinking book clubs and bridge, golfing and writing pals.
Facebook: @LindaMooreAuthor
Instagram: @LindaMooreAuthor
What’s the oddest thing a reader has ever asked you?
What do you wear when you're writing? It caught me off guard and I had to think for a minute and replied--"Clothes, but no shoes."
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
Many, so many. Some are in my home and I say hello to them every morning. I love Velázquez's Rokeby Venus or Venus at Her Mirror a detail of which appears on ATTRIBUTION's cover. It's in The National Gallery, London and I have seen it many times. The painting has many unanswered questions: Who was the model? Whose face likely not the model by the angle, is in the mirror? How did Velázquez manage to paint a nude in the religious Spanish court where he had his studio? Did he paint it in Italy? In the early 1900s a suffragette entered the gallery and slashed the canvas with a knife because she felt the work objectified women.
If you could create a museum exhibition, what would be the theme?
Forgotten Women Artists- to highlight brilliant women artists that most of the world has never heard of. It is shocking that The National Gallery in London only has twenty-one women in their collection. The giant Metropolitan Museum in New York that covers art from all of human history has only SEVEN women in their collection. So many women have been overlooked including Vermeer's daughter Maria, who may have painted seven of his thirty-five known works. Museum leadership needs to work aggressively to add women to their collections and attribute works to them that now have labels assigning the works to male relatives or their art tutors or colleagues.
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
I am a city girl who enjoys museums, restaurants and yes, shopping, but I enjoy untouched remote places like Antarctica where I have been three times.I have been to over 100 countries and that sounds like a lot but there are, depending on how you count, over 200 countries. I want to see places I have not visited like the Gobi desert in Mongolia, Tunisia and oh, Turkey, would love to go to Istanbul.
Do you speak a second language? Do you think differently in that language? Does it influence your writing?
I speak Spanish fluently and yes, thinking in Spanish changes the pace and approach to communication. I was writing a scene in which the character Antonio, who is Spanish, becomes enraged, I switched to Spanish - thinking and Antonio's communication changed with his level of anger.
