Elana and Gary Vikan: FINDING HOME (with Elisabeth Dahl)

Join The Ivy for this evening event with Elana and Gary Vikan, where you can learn more about the riveting memoir Finding Home: How the Holocaust Shaped My Family, Elana’s first book as primary author. A wonderful memoir that many readers will connect and learn from, it traces the story of Elana’s family and their intergenerational migrations, from Vilna, the “Jerusalem of the North,” to France, to the US, and back to France and Vilnius. With victims, triumphs, and many stories that feel strikingly contemporary, this is a book that prompts generative conversation. We are fortunate that acclaimed author and Ivy bookseller Elisabeth Dahl will join Elana and Gary in conversation.

Purchase Finding Home here!

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Elana Klausner Vikan was born in Manhattan, raised in Cranston, Rhode Island, and educated at Bryn Mawr College, with a double major in French and Russian. She spent the summer of 1965 in a Russian language immersion program and trip to the Soviet Union under the National Defense Education Act, after which she studied in Paris for her junior year. At Princeton University, in the Department of Comparative Literature, she was awarded the Sibley Prize to support a research year in Paris. Elana was a lifelong teacher of French, Russian, and the history of art, working at Princeton University, Georgetown Day School, and, for 28 years, Roland Park Country School in Baltimore. Elana now spends time with her family and three grandsons, plays classical music on the piano, enjoys her Boston Terriers, and continues to travel extensively throughout Europe, though most often to her beloved France, with her husband Gary. She collaborated with Gary on the book Postcards from Behind the Iron Curtain, about their year in Romania in 1974-1975.

Gary Vikan was director of the Walters Art Museum from 1994 to 2013; from 1985 to 1994 he was the museum’s chief curator. Before coming to Baltimore, Gary was senior associate at Harvard’s Center for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. A native of Minnesota, he received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. in the history of art from Princeton University. Gary was appointed by President Clinton to his Cultural Property Advisory Committee, and has debated twice on the topic of antiquites repatriation at the Oxford Union. He was knighted as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2004. In retirement, he lectures, teaches, and writes. His recent books include Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director (2016); The Holy Shroud: A Brilliant Hoax in the Time of the Black Death (2020); My Father Took Pictures: Growing Up in Smalltown Minnesota (2021); and, with Elana, Postcards from Behind the Iron Curtain (2023).

Elisabeth Dahl’s fiction and essays have been published by NPR, American Short Fiction, The Rumpus, Post Road, Necessary Fiction, and other outlets and journals. She’s also the author-illustrator of the middle-grade novel Genie Wishes (Abrams Books). A past recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, Elisabeth lives in Baltimore, where she works at The Ivy Bookshop.