Slothful sleuthing

Over the last few weekends I've been knitting and cooking along to the sounds of Netflix'd art mystery / heist documentaries—a favorite topic of mine, along with foreign espionage shenanigans, obscure religious symbolism found throughout architecture and art, and double meanings, hidden clues, and secret trails.

Is it any wonder I have a soft spot for Dan Brown's Robert Langdon, Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon and White Collar's Neal Caffrey?

My only regret* from college is that I didn't follow through with my minor in art history, because it would have required that I only take art history classes along with classes for my major, a double concentration in finance and management within my university's commerce school. That seemed altogether much too limiting, so I made up for it then by squeezing in as many classes as I could, and now by digging into mostly-plausible novels and sometimes badly-lit documentaries.

Watching art restorers, historians, and authenticators attempt to analyze the brushstrokes, canvas material, and clues hidden within a painting is ridiculously engaging to me. The two best films I've found on Netflix streaming recently are Nova: Mystery of a Masterpiece (about experts investigating whether a portrait sold for about $20,000 in 1998 is actually a lost Leonardo da Vinci worth millions) and Stolen (about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in 1990).

The whole experience is of course much improved when a thrilling bout of detective work enjoyed vicariously from my den is followed by a tasty homemade pizza.

Have y'all been Netflixing anything good recently?

(*Actually, I have another regret from my college chapter: not doing a semester abroad.)

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