Vermeer Tango, a 2019 novel by Rob Chirico follows Max Brand, Washington, D.C, bartender and former art historian with a background in conservation as he and his ex-wife attempt to track down in Buenos Aires Vermeer’s “The Concert”, one of the works stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in 1990. A second story line follows Eric Zorn, a restorer and forger who has restored the now-battered Vermeer for sale by his Argentinean art dealer employers but decides to sell it himself after finding out they’re not going to pay him what he was promised.
One night before he leaves for Argentina as he is working in his bar, a Kentucky congressman, Kyle Morton (ludicrously, from my point of view) asks Max why he didn’t stick to a career in art conservation since “from what I hear it’s a pretty lucrative business.” One wonders if it is as lucrative a business as being a member of Congress. #conservationfiction